


In Purgatory

by isthemachinesinging



Category: Screenwriter RPF, Supernatural, Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-10
Updated: 2013-04-21
Packaged: 2017-12-04 22:02:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 36,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/715588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isthemachinesinging/pseuds/isthemachinesinging
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two writers end up in their fictional Purgatory. They find Team Purgatory and the vessel of Metatron.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Arrival (Jeremy)

They hadn’t gotten Purgatory quite right.  That was understandable—after all, there was only so much you could do to make someplace on Earth look like another world or another dimension or whatever Purgatory was.  But the first thing the two men thought when they found themselves standing in a clearing in those eerie woods is  _almost but not quite_. Jeremy thought it was the too-real feeling of everything around them; everything at once desaturated and yet somehow concentrated.   _The silence too_ , he thought.   _Not just silence but a muffled feeling, like a heavy fog.  But there’s no fog.  And the light…_ It was a dim, late-afternoon light, but there was no sun in the sky.  No fog, no clouds in that sky. Just nothing, emptiness.  He shivered.

“No birds. Or bugs. Nothing to make sounds. S’why it’s so quiet. Unless there are monster birds.” Ben commented.  He looked over at Jeremy.  “Do we have monster birds?”

“ _No_. And don’t you dare start imagining them, that’ll probably make them real.”

Ben glanced up at the sky with what Jeremy would have sworn was an expression of regret.   _Probably had an idea about giant monster birds.  Looked like pterodactyls, most likely.  Always dinosaurs with him._ Inwardly he grinned, but aloud he said only:“We’re in Purgatory.”

“Yeah,  _our_  Purgatory, too.” Ben responded as he turned, looked around as if attempting to make a decision, and began to walk away.  Jeremy threw his hands up, but matched his pace.

“You can’t just go…walking through Purgatory.  Especially our Purgatory.  It’s…it’s full of monsters!  We’re writers, not hunters!”

Ben didn’t respond, didn’t look over at him. 

“We should…we should stay put.  Be quiet.  Maybe whatever process brought us here will spontaneously reverse itself.  Or we’ll wake up from this dream or hallucination or whatever this thing is that’s probably  _your fault_ , B—“

This finally got a response from Ben.  “Then stay.” His voice was as mild as ever, but Jeremy knew him well enough to know that there was anger there, too.  “Do you think whatever brought us here brought us quietly? These things never seem to, do they?  And why do you think everything will magically be reversed if we stay in that place? Do things ever work that way? Stay if you want.  Hug a tree or something, I don’t know.  But we’re not lost in the woods, and Mommy and Daddy aren’t going to come looking for you.”

“Look, I’m not advocating—I’m not the one acting like a fucking child.  You’re the one storming off into monsterland.“

“Not storming off. I’ve got someplace in mind.” And just like that, the anger was gone.  Jeremy bristled irritably; the other man’s anger had kindled his own but now he wouldn’t even fight properly.   _Not that we should fight_ , he thought.   _We fight then stalk off in opposite directions and one of us gets eaten by a werewolf and the other finds his entrails hanging in one of the trees.  Wow, I shouldn’t even be thinking these things.  Also where would you hang something in one of these trees? They’re just trunks going up and up forever.  Another thing we didn’t get right about Purgatory._

“Also, not a dream. Or a hallucination. This is real.” Ben continued, rousing Jeremy from his increasingly hectic train of thought. 

“And—“ here he glanced over at Jeremy for emphasis “not my fault.  I didn’t make this place. I’ve played in it, but I did not make it.  If I’d made it, it would be more fun.  And have fewer critters that wanted to snack on your guts.”  He paused to consider that last statement. “Or maybe it’d have  _more_  of them.”

They walked in silence for a while.  And it really was silence; Jeremy realized that there was no sound except that of their breathing—no scuff and thump of shoes on the ground, no crunch of leaves under their feet. 

“All right.  What kind of place could you possibly have in mind? We don’t know where we are.  Well—okay—we do, but how the hell could you know where to go?  Or even think you know where to go?”

“There’s an open space up there.  Looks like it runs,” here Ben waved his arms in the air, indicating either a wavy line or an octopus.  “Water, I bet. A river.   _The_  river.”

“You think—“ Jeremy stopped.  Monsters were one thing, a very bad thing, but at least he’d never put words in any of their mouths. “You think  _they’re_  here? Why? They’re out, in our…our timeline, I guess.” He snorted. “You just want to meet Cas.”

“I think if they  _are_  here, finding them is probably our best option for getting home.  And as you said, we’re not hunters.  Dean is.” Ben responded, pointedly ignoring the dig about Cas.

Jeremy shrugged. “True enough.  Still say we should’ve at least left some kind of sign back where we landed, though.  If we don’t find anything along the river…if there is a river…we should go back.”

Ben hummed noncommittally, and they walked on in silence.  Jeremy lost himself in thought, analyzing the landscape around them and comparing it to their fictional Purgatory.  Eventually, a soft and distant sound began to intrude itself on his reverie.  It took him a moment to place it, and then he realized: it was the sound of someone whistling.  A very familiar song, one that he really should know but he doesn’t and  _why is he trying to name the song when some creature is playing games with them probably been following them the whole time and just getting closer and closer now and_ —He realized the whistling was coming from beside him. And now he’s not just irritated, he’s furious, and maybe it’s mostly fear, but he just  _can’t_.  He grabbed the other man by the arm—the whistle cut off mid-tune—and pushed him up against a tree.

“You are a goddamn  _child_ , you know that?” he snarled. “I don’t know how we got here, and I don’t know if I believe it’s what we think it is—but I want to fucking get  _home_ , I’m going along with your idea because—I don’t even know—and you’re…fucking  _whistling_  like you’re off on an adventure to meet your magical imaginary friends.”

He leaned closer for emphasis, feeling sick.  This wasn’t him, not really, he wouldn’t be doing this.  Not in their world, but then, they aren’t in their world.  They’re in that crazy, sick world they’ve been writing about all these years.  Maybe this was how it worked here.  You don’t argue like sane men, you shove and growl and bite like mad dogs.  Still…he can’t be doing this.  Ben just looked at him, waiting.   _I’ll fight you if I need to but I’m hoping you’ll just step back_ is what Jeremy thought he read in those eyes, and suddenly he didn’t care what world it was or why he was doing this—he was just fucking  _done_  with this man.  A dark voice snarled inside him:  _I’ll rip the crazy out of you with my teeth, you fucking freak._ He bit back those words, but leaned closer and hissed in Ben’s ear. “You…are…crazy.” 

He stepped back, releasing his grip on the other man, who stared at him silently.  He repeated it softly, staring into the other man’s eyes. “Crazy.” And like that, his fury broke.  

Ben didn’t respond, just looked around for a moment, as if to get his bearings, then set off again.  As if nothing had happened.  After a moment, Jeremy followed him. As he fell into step beside him, Ben spoke quietly.

“I know what I am.”

“I’m  _sorry_.” And he is.  Because, yeah, he’s thought it before. They all think it, they joke about it, it’s become the standard description of Ben.  _You know Ben’s a fucking genius and he’s a nice guy, really, but he’s fucking crazy too, ha ha._  And sometimes he just gets so  _tired_  of it, but he’d never— Disgust coiled in his belly. He’s going to pay for this when they get back—if they get back… _oh God don’t even think that way_ …—because all of that…that’s fucking  _assault_  territory. Maybe in Purgatory you can shove your friends up against trees and call them crazy, maybe that’s okay here, but not in the real world where they are real people.  And they have to be real people, even here, because if they aren’t…He shuddered, remembering the upswelling of rage that had consumed him when he shoved Ben against the tree. He wondered what that was. _Maybe Purgatory has an effect on people.  Did we write that?_ He couldn’t remember.

“Yeah.”  It wasn’t acceptance or forgiveness, just acknowledgement.  He swallowed.   _Broke a fucking friendship, good job.  Probably leave the show too, even better fucking job._

“I—I just—“ _don’t know what came over me._ And that was true enough, but it felt hollow.  So what if he didn’t know why?  It’s an excuse and not even a good one. His fists clenched.

Absurdly, the other man giggled.  “Going to beat  _yourself_  up, then, instead of me?” When Jeremy didn’t respond, he continued gently, “I told you, I know what I am.  It works for me.  I don’t know—sometimes it doesn’t—“ here he broke off, hesitating before continuing more slowly, “Sometimes it doesn’t work for other people, I think. But I can’t…” He stopped.

 Jeremy was silent.  He pulled his glasses off slowly, rubbing them on a shirt tail as he considered. “I’m sorry.” It’s all he can say, apparently.   He could feel the anger still there, coiled under the surface. 

“Forget it.” Ben responded, his voice mild.  “But do it again and I’m not just going to forget it when we get back.” And with that, he speeds up a bit, as if in dismissal.   _Conversation over._

There were no more words between them for a long time.  Jeremy started to think it must be near to nightfall; then he wondered if it was ever night there.  Or maybe it was never day, really, and never night—just this eternal in-between time.  The light hadn’t changed at all, and they must have been here for –what—hours?  He wasn’t hungry though, or tired, really, and maybe that was a good thing.  They could just keep walking until…well, until…  There was another sound now, and this time it wasn’t whistling.  It was a rushing, burbling sound, and for a second he panicked— _beasts, monsters chattering_ —before his brain identified it as the sound of running water.  It was a normal sound—the first normal sound, he realized, that they’ve heard since they got to Purgatory.  It wasn’t muffled or distant, but sharp and clear.  He was still marveling at the realness, the there-ness, of the sound of the river when he felt the blade press against his neck.

“What are you? Not lookin to attack, fresh meat right in front of you?” It was a voice he knew and yet didn’t know at all.  This voice was low and rough and menacing, and he knew its owner could press that blade in without a hesitation.  

“I’m human, Dean,” he whispered.  Maybe the name was a mistake—but he  _had_ to, he had to establish that connection.  _I know you Dean.  I’ve been in your head.  Some of your life? I built that.   Not the best thing to tell you, maybe._

The blade pressed a bit closer, but its holder was practiced and careful.  It was a warning, not a killing decision. And suddenly he felt something cold beside him— _oh dear God there was nothing there where did that come from_ —something with a stink that isn’t like anything he had ever known but which fills him with irrational fear.  It pressed closer—its cold was almost numbing—as if listening, and then sniffed him quietly. 

“He tells the truth, brother.”

The blade was withdrawn from his neck then, and a hand grabbed his shoulder and pulled him around roughly.  He found himself staring into a face that was, like the voice, both utterly familiar and utterly strange. 

“You know me.  How? Did Sam—“ here the man stopped, pressing his lips together. “Did Sam…send you?”

“No…not Sam…I…”  _Sam’s not looking for you, Dean. I’m sorry._ He didn’t know how to tell their story, what to say.  _My friend and I, we make a TV show about you.  In a different universe, I guess. And we suddenly found ourselves here, and my friend decided to come looking for you, so here we are._ All this ran through his mind, but he said only,“I don’t know how we got here.”

Dean looked away, and Jeremy knew there was disappointment there.  For a second, he thought it was strong enough that Dean would forget that Jeremy didn’t answer his real question. But just as he started to relax, Dean turned back snake-quick.  “Tell me how you know my name.” It wasn’t a question anymore. Jeremy drew a breath to answer.

“I –we—came from a, uh, I guess you’d call it—“ he stammered.  He remembered, now, that Dean has been in an alternative world where his life was a TV show.  Or he hoped had—maybe everything they’d done in the show hadn’t happened in this world. But he had to assume…Dean was staring at him.

“Brother.” The vampire, again, and Jeremy and Dean both looked over at him.  Benny nodded in the direction of the river, and they both followed his gaze. Jeremy  drew in a breath. “Well, you met him, all right, Ben,” he whispered. Dean glanced back at him sharply before returning his attention to the two men standing on the bank of the river.

They were standing close, very close.  There was a sudden fluttering sound. Ben stepped back from the angel with an audible gasp, his gaze flickering between the other’s face and something he seemed to see above and behind him.  “ _Castiel._ ”

Jeremy noticed suddenly that now there were shadows, the first he had seen in Purgatory—strange in the absence of any directional light.  They flickered around the angel—Castiel’s—feet, stretching and bowing and flexing.   _Wings_ , he thought in shock—somehow this is what made it real.  He looked up from the shadows to his purgatory companion.   _He sees them,_  he thought.  _Not just the shadows.  He sees his actual wings.  How can he see them?_   Dean made a sound beside him—curiosity maybe, or annoyance, he wasn’t sure—and then Dean was dragging him by the shoulder down to the river. The two—man and angel—did not acknowledge their arrival.

“Cas, they’re human—well you’d know that.  You got any ideas where—“

“Dean.” And Castiel’s voice was—like Dean’s—both known and strange.  He sounded on the surface like Misha— like the Castiel he’d known. But deep underneath there was a suggestion of harmonics, of many voices blended together—the sound of eternity given form and a voice.  He was shaken, sharply.  Dean was staring at him.  “He’s an angel. You know that, I guess. Your friend,” here he nodded at Ben, who was still staring awestruck at Castiel, “he knew his name. I want to know how.”

“Dean.” Castiel repeated, not looking away from Ben.  “It doesn’t matter. We need to get them out of here, safely.   _Now_.” Now his gaze flickered over to the vampire. “That passage. It will return them—they’re both human. We need to get to it quickly. It is imperative that we get this man out of Purgatory. He  _must not_ be here.” Castiel indicated Jeremy.  “His friend as well.”

“Take a couple of days.” The vampire leaned in and addressed Jeremy. “Have to say, don’t mind you goin first.  Three of us got some…complications to take care of before we can get through.” Benny shrugged and walked away.

Castiel glanced after him, with a slight nod, then turned his attention back to the man standing across from him.  He raised one hand, almost hesitantly, as if to touch him.  Ben moved as if to step back, then raised his own hand.  For a moment they both stood uncertainly.  Finally, Ben took Castiel’s hand and enfolded it in both of his own. 

“Hello, Castiel,” he greeted softly. “I’m so gl—It’s good to meet you.”

“And you.” Castiel responded with a nod.  He looked over at Dean.

“Dean…this is the vessel of Metatron.”


	2. Journey (Ben)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Purgatory plus two travel to the portal, encountering some of Purgatory's denizens along the way.

There’s a silence. Ben’s quite sure they all stop breathing for a moment. He knows that he does, shock freezing his lungs until a sharp pain draws him to gasp. _This is the vessel of Metatron._ He stares at the ground. The angel’s shadow is gone; he figures if he looks up he will see only a man.

That’s…well, that’s something anyway. Already the vision of the angel’s true form is fading from his mind; when he grasps at it he can only pull out a bit here, a piece there. The entirety of it is sinking into the deep well of his mind. He supposes it will surface, mirage-like, in his dreams.

Then Dean draws a long, slow breath. “More angel crap.” Ben looks up at him; he’s staring at Castiel accusingly.

“Metatron…he’s the one who wrote up the Kill Dick recipe, yeah? What’s his vessel doing here?”

“I don’t know. But there are more tablets than Leviathan.”

Dean snorts. “Of course there are. What kind of tablets? Got a Get Outta Purgatory one?”

“I don’t know what they are, Dean. It’s not for angels to know what’s on them; they are for humans.”

“Goddamn angel crap again.” But he grimaces, barely perceptibly, and Castiel’s eyes widen slightly and there is a twitch in his shoulders. Ben has no problem reading their exchange.

_Sorry. Can’t stand your family._

_It’s all right, Dean. I’m used to your feelings by now._

Dean looks over at Ben, appraising. “Would Metatron be useful?”

There’s a long hesitation; Castiel stares openly at Ben for a long moment. “I don’t believe…it is extremely unlikely that an accident brought him here, Dean. “

“Yeah…why I asked if he’d be useful. You think Dick found more of those…tablets, whatever? While he was looking for the Levi block?”

Castiel shook his head. “He’d have no reason. They are not something one finds by accident…one finds them only by looking with specific purpose.”

“So…” Dean scans their surroundings, a safety check. “Let me get this straight. There’s a bunch of these angel rocks floatin’ around, you don’t know what they are or how to read ‘em, ‘cause they’re not for you. Some guy Metatron wrote ‘em, and now you say this hippie dude,” here he jerks his thumb at Ben, “is his vessel. Who suddenly and mysteriously,” a glare at Ben, “shows up here. In God damned Purgatory.”

“Purgatory is not damned by God, Dean. And Metatron is not ‘some guy.’” Castiel says formally, and Ben watches a ghostly flicker of a smile between Dean and Cas; the too-literal formality is clearly a shared joke. “But, yes. That’s the essential of the situation. But no one’s seen Metatron in…a very long time. He’s not dead, we don’t think…He just vanished. It’s very mysterious.”

“So Daddy’s gone, Daddy’s secretary’s gone, no one knows. Maybe Daddy skipped out with the secretary.” Dean shrugs under Castiel’s unamused glare. “Just a thought.”

Ben sees a movement out of the corner of his eye, but before he can turn to see what it is, Dean has already turned, drawing up his blade. It’s an elegant, swift, simple movement, and for moment he is almost dazed by it. He doesn’t realize until Dean lowers the blade that it is only Benny, bored of waiting at the edge of the woods, returned to see what the delay is about.

“Somethin’ wrong, brother?” He addresses Dean alone, although he gives a passing nod to all of them.

“He’s a vessel. A goddamn angel vessel.” Dean sounds disgusted, gesturing at Ben. “Same plan as before, we’ll get ‘em home through the portal. But now I think we all gotta go together, keep ‘em with us. Cas says this was no accident, and I’m inclined to believe that. “

Benny pauses, gazing at the empty gray sky. “Jus’ remember your promise to me, brother. Other than that, I don’t care. Angel business is none o’ mine.”

Dean nods to him shortly, then looks back at Castiel and the two men watching him anxiously. He sighs.

“Either of you know how to use a knife?”

“To fight? No.” Jeremy’s voice is a rough whisper; it’s the first time Ben’s heard it since they found the trio by the water.

“Not….really. Not in…you know, as a real thing…” He’s done some roleplaying, some– _well, admit it_ \--Dean-playing, but never with a real knife, and never…well, never with anything real at stake, of course. He doesn’t want to tell Dean that, though. He doesn’t know what Jeremy told Dean about them; he vaguely remembers them standing together when he met Castiel.

“Figures.” Dean bends, pulls a thin blade from his boot, holds it out to Ben. He can hear Jeremy draw a breath, but he seems to reconsider what he wanted to say, and remains silent. “Take it. I guess we’re gonna have to look out for the two of you, but you can help us out.” He pauses. “Go for the…Well, heart’s best, but if you don’t know what you’re doin’…Go for the throat. Won’t kill ‘em, but it’ll slow ‘em down.” He makes a sideways slashing motion, half-turned from Ben. “Like that.”

Ben stares down at the ebony blade. It’s stone, flaked, tied roughly to a wooden handle with some kind of twine that on closer inspection he sees is bark, stripped and twisted. “Thank you.”

He hears a rustle, and looks up from the knife to see Benny reaching into his coat. He pulls out another blade; this one short, wide, and thick. He holds it out to Jeremy. “I hardly use this one. Ain’t the sharpest, but it‘ll get you through. Do like Dean said—the throat. Put some strength into it…it’s harder than you think, cuttin’ on a throat.”

Jeremy accepts it silently, running a thumb carefully along the blade’s edge and looking over at Ben. He’s not sure what he expects to see in Jeremy’s eyes…fear, perhaps, or maybe a hint of the anger from before. He’s not prepared for the pity he sees, and he quickly averts his gaze.

“Right. Let’s go. Like I said, don’t know if it’s true, but supposedly there’s some kind of portal that’ll spit humans right back into the world.” He looks over at Castiel again, and Ben shivers at the plain longing in his face. “And we’re gonna pull an angel through, too.”

“Dean…”

“Shut up, Cas. You’re coming and that’s final. I spent…I spent too long…” He seems to realize the other men are there, and bites off his words. “We’ll get you through.”

Jeremy clears his throat, hesitantly. “This…portal…it returns you to ‘the world’? The world you arrived here from?”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Yeah, like I said, supposedly.”

“We’re not…from there. Where we’re from…well…you, all this, your brother,”—Dean flinches at the mention of Sam—“it’s…a TV show. We make it all up.”

“Son of a _bitch_!” Dean spins around, and there’s no elegance in this move; he’s jerky with rage. Ben steps back. “I’ve been there. We both have—Sam and I.” He raises a finger and points at each of them in turn. “It was a TV show. We weren’t even brothers. This angel asshole killed everyone. Shot up the set. ”

“I wrote that.” Ben doesn’t realize he’s speaking until the words have already escaped his mouth.

Dean’s gaze turns on him, cold. “People died.”

“It was a story.” Jeremy jumps in defensively. “It wasn’t real…we didn’t know.”

“People _died_.” He’s still staring at Ben. “You write?”

Next to him, Castiel makes a small pleased sound.

“Yeah…”

But in the next moment, Dean seems to dismiss the question. “All right. I don’t give a shit where you’re from. Right now, we’re gonna find this door, we’re gonna get outta here. Then we’ll figure out somethin’ for you.” His voice gentles almost imperceptibly. “Got no chance of finding you a better way out in here. Hell, I’m not even sure _we_ have a way out. But when we get back home, we’ll find somethin’.”

His shoulders quirk briefly, and he shakes his head. “Best we can do.”

He gives another glance over at Ben, shakes his head. “Better get going.”

They head out, Benny in the lead, Castiel to their side, and Dean following behind. Jeremy ends up walking close to him, still rubbing his hand on the chunky blade Benny had given him. Ben tugs the band from his ponytail, shakes his hair free. He runs his fingers through it, deliberately pulling it forward, over his eyes. It’s an illusion of privacy, but he’s always been pretty good at making the illusory real, detaching himself from the rest of the world.

If he thinks about it—which he doesn’t, really—he figures people must think his hair is a statement, and it is, but it’s not the one they think. Or at least, it’s not _only_ what they think. _I’m a very nervous person._ People look at him and laugh when he says that, taking in his laconic demeanor, the easy stoner drawl. _I’m scared of everything._ They think he’s being funny, or exaggerating, but he really isn’t. Some of his fears are, he figures, normal and acceptable—he’s afraid that he’s not as good a father as he should be, that his work is not as good as it could be—and some are…well, not. Zombie alpacas are probably not a legitimate concern for a grown man, but at least such fears serve him well in his current job.

“I know what you’re doing.”

He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t want to talk; the brief moment of calm and grace after Castiel’s announcement— _this is the vessel of Metatron_ \-- as they ( _Dean_ ) figured out what to do has faded. His mind is a rush of conflict, a thrashing storm of possibilities, potentialities, one cascading over another. If he talks, he’s not sure what he’ll say, and it’s usually been better if he keeps quiet at times like that.

“You’re very obvious when you try to hide like that.”

“I don’t want to talk, Jeremy.”

“I know. But I don’t know what the hell is going on here, and apparently we _are_ here because of you, and you…”

“Don’t.” He tries to make his voice sharp, but it comes out high and brittle. He side-glances over at Jeremy, who is watching him. Then Jeremy’s gaze shifts over to Castiel, who is neatly matching their pace, looking away from them into the woods beyond. His jaw tightens.

“Just...don’t say yes.” With that Jeremy quickens his pace, moving ahead of Ben, not quite catching up to Benny.

Ben looks over at Castiel, wondering. Some idea tries to crawl out of the dark tides of his mind. _Before Castiel had that body, it belonged to a man. A man whose name I’ve forgotten, but I do remember he had a family. A daughter. Then Cas came and he said yes and now Cas has his body. And that man never came home._ He stifles it, buries it deep.Tries to cut off the images that float unbidden to the surface of his mind. He’s always had that, like a personal movie projector in his mind. He’s learned to tune it by this point; turning vivid visions into stories. But this one isn’t a story, it’s real, and he tries to shut the projector off, shut it down, stop the images it insists on feeding into his conscious mind.

Castiel looks like his normal image of _Cas_ now, which is to say he looks sort-of-but-not-really like Misha. The creature of flowing light, with wings not so much fluttering as pulsing, has faded as if it was only another vision. Even as he tries, he can’t quite bring the image back into his mind; even as he grasps one piece of it – the size of his wings, the way the flow of light seemed to differentiate into what looked like separate heads—it slips away. He doesn’t think he could describe Castiel’s true form, if that was indeed what he had seen. He doesn’t think he could draw it either, and that’s even more of an affront. He’s always been able to translate the living world with the sketching of pen and paper. Sometimes he thinks it’s like a first language for him; stories begin with images, with drawings that become wordplay that become phrases that become stories. Not being able to draw something—it feels wrong. It’s like being rendered mute.

Something bumps his elbow, taps his shoulder. He turns, gripping Dean’s knife tighter, although none of the others had given any warning. It’s only Jeremy, eyeing him carefully. He’s very pale, with sharp points of color high on his cheeks, but the anger that Ben had earlier seen in his face seems to be gone.

“You think we should talk to him?” Jeremy pitches his voice low, and nods to Castiel. “You know what he’s going to do.”

“He’ll try to stay.” It’s not a question; they’ve been through this, it’s part of the Castiel story this year. They have no reason to think _this_ Castiel is different; he seems largely the same, drifting to the side of the group, alert and protective, yet separate. “I don’t know if we can change that, or if we should—we don’t know how it would change, maybe nothing would change, they’d still get hold of him…”

“But if we try. Maybe there’s something, I don’t know—But it would be better for Dean.”

Ben turns, looks back at Dean. Dean catches his gaze and frowns, then shifts to scanning the area, glancing behind himself. He lingers at Castiel for a moment. There’s some kind of desperate, sad yearning in Dean’s face, and Ben wonders if Jeremy isn’t right. They need to at least try to convince Cas to go through the portal, for Dean’s sake.

“You’re right,” he admits, turning forward and away from Dean again. “We should talk to Cas. But not Dean. Point is, we want him to not know. I think—I think he’s already wondering. Or he’s afraid…”

“Think he’s afraid Cas is gonna try to stay behind.”

Ben is silent for a moment. “I think that losing Cas would be the worst possible thing that could happen for him. So, yeah, he’s afraid that’s what’s going to happen. That Cas is going to be left behind. Or he’s going to die going through the portal, and leave Dean alive.”

“They seem…pretty close.” Jeremy’s voice is careful, thoughtful. Ben snorts back a laugh. That had been the plan for their Dean and Cas—a renewed closeness after a season and a half of distance and betrayal. Ben, by his own choice, wasn’t in a position to drive the narrative anymore, but he had been pleased with this proposed development. Dean and Cas were _family_ , and much as it was fascinating and sometimes fun to participate in their falling out, he was glad to get them back together. He’s always been a proponent of the idea that Dean and Cas shared a specific kind of love, deep and awesome and sometimes awful, a love that had no exact equivalent in human terms. A profound bond. But this Dean, and this Cas…

“I’ll talk to Cas,” Ben says abruptly, keeping his thoughts about Dean and Cas to himself. He veers off towards the angel.

“Good luck.” Jeremy mutters behind him.

Cas glances over at Ben as he meets up and walks alongside. Ben’s certain he doesn’t have to look to know who is there; it’s a touch of the human bleeding through, a byproduct of so much time in a vessel.

“You were talking about me.” After a moment, he adds: “And Dean.”

“You’re going to stay here.” It’s not a question, but a statement; there’s no way for him to be certain _this_ Castiel’s plans are the same as _their_ Castiel’s, yet he has no doubt.

“If you know that, then you know why. This is where I belong, doing atonement for –“

“ _Fuck_ atonement!” His voice is harsh and loud, and he knows the others have heard. Well, so much for quietly and privately changing Castiel’s mind. “Fuck your atonement. It’s shit. You aren’t paying for anything by staying here. You aren’t making anything right. You’re just making more suffering.”

There’s pain in Castiel’s voice. “What I’ve done…I can’t make it right. You don’t know. This—being here—this is the closest I can come to paying for what I did.”

“But you aren’t paying for anything. You’re running around, dodging Levis and thinking you’re getting one step closer to absolution, but it doesn’t work like that. You want atonement? Go back. Make right what you can. Help fix what you’ve broken, heal those you’ve hurt, where you can. Like you did for Sam, taking on his Hell-hallucinations. _That’s_ atonement. This is…this is bullshit.”

Castiel is silent for several moments. Ben studies him quietly. This isn’t at all what he’d wanted this conversation to be, but that’s neither here nor there now. He’s struck, yet again, by how much and how little Castiel looks like Misha. He’d met all of them as their characters first, and there’s often a bleed for him between character and actor—but never so much as with Misha. There’s a part of Cas that he feels is closest to Misha, a Cas that he affectionately thinks of as _Cassie_. He’d had Balthazar use the nickname once. No one had caught it. It’s Cassie he sees here now, and he has to bite at the inside of his mouth and turn away to resist the wrap an arm around Cas’ shoulders.

“I will consider it.” Castiel’s tone is formal. “But if I feel that there is any danger to Dean, in my attempting to go through the portal—I must stay back. I won’t allow any harm to come to Dean.”

It’s probably the best response he could have hoped for; he’s not delighted, because they’d never thought about what if Cas tries to go through, it wasn’t the story they were doing, so he really has no idea what will happen. It’s possible that this has been for nothing; that the doorway will spit the angel out and everything will happen just as it did in their own version.

With a soft “thank you,” he allows himself to drift away from Cas, back towards Jeremy. He senses, rather than sees, both Dean and Benny eyeing him. He shrugs off their gazes. He doesn’t think Dean heard them, but he’s sure the vampire did. It doesn’t matter.

He leans over to tell Jeremy what Castiel said when suddenly Benny begins to whistle. He recognizes the tune— _In the Hall of the Mountain King_ , the same song Ben had been whistling earlier, the song that had driven Jeremy into a rage against him. Instinctively he pulls his knife up, holding it blade out, white-knuckled. He glances back and Dean. Dean also has his blade out, held waist-high, and is scanning their surroundings carefully. He looks forward to Benny. The vampire is turning in a careful circle, still whistling, and holds up first three fingers, then four. His gaze flicks back to Dean in time to see him nod, almost imperceptibly.

When the attack comes, it comes in a rush. They don’t move in one by one, to be picked off, but all at once. There’s a rush of dark, a suggestion of red eyes. Benny swings his xylophone blade at one, nearly severing its neck in one blow. He draws it back like a saw. The creature’s blood is black, thick and slow like cooled oil. Ben spins around, sees Jeremy, sees his own terror reflected in his eyes.

“Back,” he manages to gasp. If they stand back-to-back, nothing will be able to come at them unseen. He thinks. He’s never done this before, not really, and _oh he is so aware of that now_.

He sees a bright, flaring glow to his side, and he thinks it must be Cas smiting, and he wants to look around but he doesn’t want to die for it—he can see the monster melting out of the woods to tear into his throat the second is attention is averted. There’s a growl, then a shriek and a _chunk_ that he thinks must be another blade going through another neck. Dean’s blade, this time.

Three, he thinks. _If Benny’s signal meant four, that means there’s just one more—_

Jeremy jerks suddenly, back against him, and he whirls around. It’s close. It looks human, and yet not—bony shadows like an exoskeleton and eyes glowing red. It looks almost insectile, and he has time to wonder what it is before Benny, still whistling, is yanking it back by its knotted hair.

“Git back,” he says, and in one motion he pushes the creature forward and swings his serrated blade. It’s not as clean a blow as his last, and the creature’s head lolls comically to the side as it crashes to the ground. He stomps on the chest and leans over to finish the job. Thick blood oozes from the neck, and he wipes the blades clean on the creature’s body. Everything suddenly goes very still, a quiet broken only by their harsh and broken breathing.

Ben looks down at the body of the monster. It no longer looks insectile or creature-like; it looks terribly and tragically human. The dark, ropy exoskeleton is only folds of clothing. He feels guilt tug at his heart. They’d killed something, okay, so it was pretty much us-or-them, they’d been attacked, but it was hard to see what looked like a person torn apart on the ground.

 _We did that_ , he thinks. He swallows and there’s something greasy in his throat, his stomach trembling. He bends over the body—he hears Benny sigh—and before his eyes the body changes. Flesh turns to ash, glowing and sparking, and even as he watches the ash crumbles to dust. He jumps back, startled.

“Ain’t none of us real flesh here,” comes Benny’s drawl. “Well, y’all are, but not me, an’ not them. Just souls, see? It’s the idea, makes us real enough to ourselves. To you. You take away that idea,” he makes a slashing motion at his throat with his free hand, “an’ it’s just a soul again.”

_It does present an interesting curl in the metaphysics, doesn’t it? If you murder a monster in monster heaven, where does it go?_

“Where does it go?” He echoes his own thoughts. Benny shakes his head.

“Don’t know. Never been one to find out. Never see ‘em again, know that much.”

They gather together, a quick check in and reassurance. Dean examines both of them, then nods curtly. They’re all untouched and unharmed, physically at least. He nods to Benny, who turns and looks around as if getting his bearings, then heads off. Dean jerks his head in the direction Benny has shown, indicating that they should head off again.

It’s quiet for a long time, the only sound that of their steady breathing and the distant scuff of boots on the ground. The light is constant and unchanging; they could have been walking for hours or days. Then, suddenly, Ben hears a new thud of footsteps behind and turns to see Dean.

“We gotta stop and rest.”

“I—I’m---we’re okay,” He’s not tired, either—he’s sure he should be, but he supposes that’s a part of this place. You don’t get hungry and you don’t get tired and you don’t get out, ever. He wonders if you can sleep here. He wonders if you can dream.

Dean gives him a sidelong glance. “You don’t feel it, I know. But you still gotta stop, take a rest sometimes. Otherwise it’ll just hit you all at once. Bring you right down. I learned that pretty quick here.”

They spread out along the riverbank. Ben sits against the smooth trunk of one of the bizarre trees; it feels alien and strange, but he feels safer with something behind him. Dean and Cas stand together at some distance; they appear to be deep in conversation. He vaguely hopes Cas isn’t telling him about their earlier conversation. Jeremy is pacing the riverbank, gaze skittering nervously over to Ben, then jerking away.

“We’re supposed to rest,” he calls softly, just loud enough that he’s pretty sure Jeremy can hear. “Sit down.”

Jeremy walks over to him, and sits in front of him, collapsing all at once onto the ground with a thud. He rocks up on his heels, curling his hands around his knees, and studies Ben intently.

“So…what’d he say?”

Ben sighs. “He said he’d try to go through. But that if he thought he was putting Dean in danger, he’d pull back.”

“Best we could hope for, I guess.” He hesitates. “You think he was lying to you?”

“Cas is a terrible liar. No, I don’t think he was lying.”

Jeremy nods, then hesitates, looking over to where Dean and Cas have apparently finished their conversation. “Did you talk to him about…this…” he gestures at Ben, “…vessel thing?”

Ben shakes his head, sharply. “No time. And what’s there to say, really?”

“I can think of a few things. Cas?” The last word is spoken no louder than the rest of the conversation, but suddenly Cas is there, looking at each of them in turn.

Jeremy doesn’t waste time, speaks bluntly. “Cas, is Jimmy still alive?”

Ben jumps. _Jimmy_ , that’s Cas’ vessel’s name, he remembers now. He’s known, he supposes, that this is what’s been on Jeremy’s mind, that this is what prompted the look of pity earlier. Jeremy was always the most attached of all of them to the people who became angels’ vessels. Jimmy was _his_ story. He thinks there’ve been others too—when they’ve given a name to the vessel, that was usually Jeremy’s doing, as he can recall. He’s never been too concerned with the human vessel, himself, except as it influenced the angel. He thinks now that perhaps that was a mistake. He closes his eyes. Doesn’t want to hear Castiel’s answer.

“An angel requires a living soul to possess a vessel. There are exceptions, but…” Cas falls silent for a moment. “They are extremely rare. A demon can possess a body from which the soul has departed, because a demon is, after all, a desecrated human soul. We are not and have never been human, so we need a human soul in residence to inhabit a mortal body.”

“So he’s alive.” Jeremy’s voice is very soft, and Ben opens his eyes to see him watching, not Cas, but Ben. His eyes are sad. There’s a spatter of black blood on his glasses. Ben wants to tell him he should clean them, but his jaw is locked shut.

_Jimmy, naked, staring blankly up at the sky. His body is a stitched-together Frankenstein’s monster, but it’s his face—oh, his face—that is the worst, horrifying. His eyes are an empty filmy blue, and there is no life in them. There is no soul there. They stare endlessly upward with no recognition. He seems monster-ravaged, passed through nightmares and torture to some other side where he can no longer be touched. Those eyes, staring and staring, with no man left to look out of them._

Ben turns, rolls away from them, gasping in revulsion at this vision. He rocks forward onto his knees, heaving, feeling as if he is going to be sick. But the moment passes. He stays, bent forward, darkness dancing in front of his eyes. After a moment, he feels a tentative hand on his shoulder. He twitches away from it, just perceptibly— _don’t touch me_. He thinks it must be Jeremy.

“He is alive, yes, but no longer responsive. He would not be able to continue to be attached to this body should I leave.”

For a confused moment, Ben thinks Cas is talking about him, then he realizes Cas is responding to Jeremy’s statement.

“Ben…you okay?” It’s Jeremy’s voice, soft, from just behind his head. He’s removed his hand, though, and that’s good.

“Yeah…just…thinking of…” He clears his throat. “Just thinking of…what happened to Jimmy. What he must be like now.”

 _Afraid of it happening to me_ , he thinks but doesn’t add. The hand sneaks to his shoulder again, but it doesn’t linger, just squeezes briefly and then departs. He shifts and rises to his feet, swaying slightly. He waves his hand at both of them. “I’m fine, I’m okay.”

“Cas…why is he a vessel?”

 “He’s been prepared for Metatron. Every vessel is prepared, from birth, for the angel they are meant to take. Some have particular needs—Lucifer and Michael needed particularly powerful and pure souls to envessel them.” His gaze strays to Dean, watching them from further up the riverbank. “Metatron…”

“And Metatron?” Ben is surprised to hear his own voice. He’d meant to keep quiet, not trusting what he might say, but his mouth apparently disagreed. “I’m not exactly strong. Or powerful. I mean, I do well enough I guess, but…And I’m definitely not pure.” He giggles, shakily, and he’s annoyed to hear a knife-edge of hysteria in it.

“Metatron is not like the others. He is not a warrior—he does not require that kind of power. He has different needs in a vessel. He requires…a particular sort of mind.”

There’s a gasping, snorting laugh from Jeremy at this. Ben ignores it. But then Jeremy draws a slow breath, and asks his next question.

“Metatron brought him here—brought us here—because he needs Ben as his vessel, yeah? So what happens if a vessel says no?”

Cas tilts his head at this but responds easily. “The next suitable vessel is approached.” There’s a clear _of course_ unspoken in his voice. “It is often a blood family member—a sibling, a parent. Or a child.” He gestures at his own vessel. “For me, the next suitable vessel was Jimmy’s daughter—“

Ben closes his eyes at that. _If it comes to that, I’ll say yes_.

“—although a child is not an ideal vessel. But it’s not always blood-related.” He gestures to Ben, staring at him piercingly, and Ben is certain he is aware of what has just passed through his mind. “I don’t know—we all recognize a vessel and the angel they are meant for, but we don’t always know why they have been chosen. But I believe…you may be the only living vessel suited for Metatron. It would explain why he reached into a secondary universe for you.”

 _Secondary_ …Ben starts to splutter at the unthinking arrogance of this, as Castiel eyes him calmly. _Well, I guess we all think our universe is the primary one, don’t we? We’d hate to think it didn’t matter._ He laughs at this, helplessly, and both Jeremy and Castiel raise their eyebrows at him. He doesn’t care.

“I’ve got no Twinner in this world, huh?” At Cas’ blank look – and Jeremy’s thoughtful look of _I recognize that but I can’t quite remember where it’s from_ —he explains, “From a book. _The Talisman_. Stephen King and, ah…Peter Straub, I think. This boy, he flips back and forth between his real world and a different world he calls the Territories. Most people have different versions of themselves in each. Called Twinners.”

Jeremy’s nodding— _oh yeah_ —but Cas is shaking his head slightly. “Essentially, yes. There is apparently no…twinner…of you in this world. Though I wouldn’t--” He breaks off, suddenly sharp and intent. His eyes flick from the woods to the sky and around again as he turns slowly. “Stay here. Do not move.” And suddenly, with a fluttering crack of wings, he moves to Dean.

He can’t hear what is being said, and he knows Jeremy can’t either, but his stomach tightens with fear and his hand closes around his knife. Benny hasn’t given a signal; he’s walking over to Dean and Cas, face tight and concerned. It’s Leviathan Ben thinks of now, black oil like the monsters’ blood, gaping mouths full of countless teeth like sharks. (They were creatures of the water, after all.)

“Ben.” Jeremy’s voice is low, strangled and rough. He’s staring across the river. There’s a dark shadow there, spilling through the space between the trees, rushing towards them. It pulses and flows like black, viscous blood. He suddenly wonders if all the monsters here are Leviathan-fed. Leviathan are, after all, the first residents of this place. They’re what it was made for. Maybe they infuse part of themselves into the monster souls, or into Purgatory itself. Maybe—

He’s grabbed, and there is a yank, and suddenly they’re away from the river, and stumbling-running further. Cas has hold of him on one side, Jeremy on the other, and he’s pulling them along.

“Run," he hisses, as if that wasn’t clear, and then he lets them go and spins around.

“Cas, no…” They both reach out to him at the same time, and Ben thinks the same thing must have gone through both their heads—he’s got no defense against Leviathan, he can’t smite them—but to their relief he runs away from them and away from the now rapidly pursuing shadow. They run in the direction he has started them; surely Castiel is trying to put distance between him and them. It’s Castiel the Leviathan want, after all.

He doesn’t want to be running. It feels wrong, and when he hears Dean shout behind them he staggers to a stop, turning, raising the blade he grips in his hand. Jeremy runs on for a few steps, but soon realizes Ben is no longer next to him and stops as well. He gestures first to Jeremy, then back to where he can still hear Dean shouting. He’s afraid of everything, and right now he thinks he might be more scared than he’s ever been— _Leviathan, what big teeth you have! The better to chomp you with, my dear…_ \-- but he’s not a coward. Or he thinks he isn’t, he doesn’t want to be, and that amounts to about the same, in the end. And he doesn’t think Jeremy is one, either. They turn together to return…where? He realizes that they’ve run far enough that he can no longer see Dean, or Benny, or the shadow anymore. Surely, if they run directly back the way they came…but he’s no longer certain which direction that was. He looks through the trees for the telltale squiggle of the river. He can’t see it. He hears Dean shout again, then Benny, and it sounds as if it’s coming from all sides, muffled and low.

“That way.” Jeremy points in a direction that Ben would have sworn was where they were running before. He starts to shake his head, and then notices the movement in the woods. Shadowy shapes dance around each other, and as he watches, one splits in two and falls to the ground. _Well, then._ They move in that direction—swiftly but not running; he’s afraid that running will ignite panic, and he suspects Jeremy feels the same.

It’s pure chaos when they get there. He counts two—no, three—Leviathan on the ground, their heads separated from their bodies. Their jaws gape, as if even as the blade sliced through their necks they still sought to bite and eat. He wonders if it’s pure instinct, the need to consume, to feed the hunger. There are more Leviathan still—one is circling Dean slowly, head occasionally snapping open to show row upon row of shark-teeth and coiling tongue. As he watches, Benny drives another one back, swings his blade, neatly severing the head in mid-morph. There are others…he thinks…a shadowy rush that he can’t quite focus on. _God, they’re fast._

He has his blade held up, tight, in his right hand—his smart hand—when the Leviathan appears between them, mouth stretched wide as it reaches for Jeremy. He doesn’t think, but pushes the blade forward. He’s made a terrible mistake-- _stupid, stupid_ \--the blade doesn’t slice through, but catches roughly on bone, on vertebra. He tries to pull it back, to saw through, but it sticks, and the knife twists alarmingly in his hand. He’s done nothing but push the Leviathan forward, into Jeremy. With a sob, he pulls backward, both hands on the knife now. He staggers back a step, and the Leviathan comes with him, pulled on the knife stuck in its neck. There’s a sudden gristly ripping sound, and something hits roughly against his blade. He doesn’t think, but twists his knife, pushing and sawing it—and suddenly it loosens. The Leviathan’s body slumps in his direction, and he screams, backing away. It falls to the ground, and the head falls down after it. He looks up, at Jeremy, who is holding Benny’s borrowed blade in both hands, face white, eyes wide and staring. They both kick the head away from the body at the same time.

They need to get away. It was a mistake to come back. They’re not hunters. He wasn’t being brave, he was being stupid. It already feels unreal. Jeremy is breathing in quick, ragged gasps, and he doesn’t resist when Ben reaches out, pulls him back in the direction they came from. What he hopes is the direction they came from, anyway. _Get out, now,_ his mind screams at him. He almost collapses to the ground when he hears Benny’s shout, the tone of it an all-clear. He steadies himself against a tree, legs trembling.

“What the hell were you two doing?” It’s Dean, who’s caught sight of them and is marching over, anger vivid in his step. “Thought Cas was taking you.”

“Yeah…” His voice is shaky. He swallows and starts again. “We came back. To help.” He waves the knife. In his peripheral vision he sees Jeremy do the same, his blade dripping with black goo.

Dean scowls. “Cas takes you somewhere, you go. He tells you—any of us tell you—to run, you run. You don’t put yourselves in the middle of a fight. How stupid _are_ you?”

“You gave us blades.” Jeremy’s voice is low and raspy. “We assumed they were to fight.”

“No, you have blades to defend yourselves if we get caught unaware. We had warning. Cas told us, said he’d get you away. You don’t second guess him. Or me.” There’s a hesitation. “Or Benny. We’re trying to keep you safe. Don’t make it harder than it is, ‘cause honestly—I don’t give a fuck about Metatron, or this vessel crap. But I made a promise to Cas, that we’d get you out. I’m getting myself outta here. And Cas. And I made a promise to Benny. So what’s two more. I’m gonna do my best to bring you too, but you pull shit like this, it’s gonna be hard.”

With a final glare at each of them, he turns and walks swiftly away from both of them. Ben moves to follow, but Jeremy grabs his sleeve and he pulls up, realizing. Dean moves away from both of them, away from Benny, and then stops. He can’t hear anything, but he’s sure he knows what’s happening. Castiel has gone too far for them to simply call to him, so Dean has gone to pray to him.

They watch quietly. A moment passes, then another. The silence is absolute, total. Ben closes his eyes and counts seconds. He opens his eyes again, and Cas is still not there. Even at a distance he can see Dean’s agitation. He can’t quite hear—Dean’s still keeping his voice quiet, and Purgatory seems to have a dampening effect on sound, anyway—but his face broadcasts urgency.

“You think…another one of them followed him?” Jeremy whispers at his shoulder.

“Or maybe he ran off. Maybe talking to him wasn’t a good idea, now he knows someone knows he was planning to stay behind. Maybe he figured this was the best way out.”

“You said he wasn’t lying.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t _know_ him, do I?” He doesn’t give Jeremy a chance to answer, strides swiftly in Dean’s direction. But he still hears the soft response behind him:

“Yes, you do.”

He’s halfway there when he smacks into something warm, grayish, and tattered, something warm that seems to vibrate with a celestial hum. The breath is knocked out of him with a huff, and he’s momentarily tangled with the other as he tries to regain his balance. Warm hands—no, not warm, hot—grip his shoulders and steady him, and then release him. The tattered figure resolves into Castiel, eyes gazing into his, narrowed with concern. He’s close, way too close— _personal space, Cas_ \--and Ben presses a hand against Castiel’s chest for leverage. He can feel the heartbeat, and it surprises him, though he doesn’t know why. Somehow he thinks of Castiel’s vessel as a body held in stasis, unchanging. He stumbles backward, laughing. He’s not sure why he’s laughing. Relief at seeing Cas, he supposes. He pulls his hand back.

They reconvene on the river bank. Dean is insistent that they all rest—they’ll be able to get to the portal tomorrow, according to Benny. They need sleep, he says, before they dare move on. They’re all worn down, exhausted. Even Castiel, who doesn’t need sleep, needs to recharge. Dean sets up a watch rotation—first Benny, then Dean, then Cas. Castiel objects, pointing out that he needs no sleep, but Dean silences him with a look, and Cas shrugs his assent.

They try to settle in. Ben chooses a place near the water. The ground is soft here, but still dry, and the familiar sound of the running water is comforting; it sounds like the world he knows. He sinks down, sits with his arms loosely wrapped around his knees. He’s homesick. _I don’t want to be here. I don’t want this to be real. I don’t want to be a vessel._ Benny stands silhouetted in the trees, holding his blade at his side. Jeremy paces further up the bank, and then decides on a spot, kneeling to brush at the space with his hands before sitting. Dean and Castiel take a place relatively close to him. Ben can almost-sort-of see a shadowy shimmer reaching out from Castiel, and he knows he is wrapping a wing around Dean. Ben wonders if Dean knows, if he can feel it; he feels an unexpected twinge of jealousy. They are all seated in a semicircle. All they need is a campfire in the center. And sleeping bags. And a real starry sky above them. And not to be in Purgatory.

 Ben looks up at the empty, unchanging sky of Purgatory. _God, I want to go home._


	3. A Door Slams Shut (Dean)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Purgatory Plus Two find the doorway out of Purgatory. Implied Dean/Cas, from Dean's point of view.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has an implied character death and some kind of gruesome imagery.

There is no night in Purgatory, only a single unchanging, unending day. It’s the middle of his watch. Or, anyway, it’s probably the middle—there’s no way to tell time here so they guess at it. It was easier when it was just him and Benny, splitting their time evenly. Now they add in Castiel, and that’s a bit more of a twist. Because they’ve given Cas a watch, and Cas doesn’t sleep, but Dean finds himself unable to rest when it’s Castiel’s watch. A part of him, a part he’s not even quite willing to admit exists, is afraid that if he sleeps, Castiel will be gone when he wakes. He’s fought so hard to find him again, finding that in seeking him he’d also forgiven him. Losing him again would be the worst thing that could happen here, so that is exactly what Dean thinks will happen. He keeps an eye on them all, of course, slowly walking the perimeter of their…camp? He supposes it’s a camp, though they’ve done nothing but lay their bodies down on the cold ground.

And the newcomers had provided a twist in their plans. They were still on their way to the supposed portal out of Purgatory—he’s not quite sure he believes in it, though he’s come to trust that Benny is sincere in believing it. The sudden appearance of the two men hadn’t changed their plans, because their only hope of getting home was to first get out of Purgatory. It seemed he was going to have to do some babysitting once they got out, which he isn’t looking forward to—though the two had acquitted themselves fairly well with both Leviathan and a vamp attack. Against his orders, of course— _does no one listen to me?_ —but they’d managed to fight and use a blade. Not bad for Hollywood types. Granted, his experience with such is fairly limited, but he wouldn’t have thought them capable. He’s mildly impressed that neither of them have freaked, panicked. Not that he’d ever tell them that. He’s aware that his world is not the same as everyone’s; that not everyone has been raised and conditioned to take on beasts of the night with calm, unshaking hand. And these two…they’d probably come from a world where monsters and demons were nothing more than stories. He remembers the TV world Balthazar had sent them to. No magic. No hunters, because there was nothing to hunt. Only stories which everyone understood to be fiction. Nightmares that everyone understood weren’t real. And now here these two were. They’d done all right so far.

He’s walking behind them now, mostly watching the woods, the other side of the river. They haven’t been attacked at “night”—not that it’s ever night here—in a long time. It’s mostly when they’re walking, moving. Dean wonders if resting time is a kind of détente, a called truce among monsters that has been extended to the human interlopers. He wonders if it’s their movement that calls the monsters onto them. Whatever the reason, it’s quiet now, and Dean looks over his unwilling charges.

They’re both asleep, at least apparently. Benny had told him they were both awake for most of his shift, though they pretended to sleep. “Could tell by their breathin’. Could hear their heartbeats, too.” But Dean’s pretty sure they’re asleep now. He looks over at the skinny, longhaired man Castiel had identified as Metatron’s vessel. _Poor dude._ Ben, he’d said. Like Benny. At least they weren’t using quite the same names. He’s curled halfway in on himself, hands curled around his shins. His hair is fallen across his eyes in a way that looks almost deliberate, as if he is trying to hide himself. Dean thinks the guy is kind of…off. He acts as if he knows Castiel, is familiar with him. Dean remembers the way he had gone over to Cas, talked to him, before the vamp attack earlier in the day. He had raised his voice, angry, though Dean wasn’t able to hear what he said, he’d seen the way Cas looked both chagrined and frustrated _. I should ask Benny what they said_ , Dean thinks. _Or Cas._ Though Cas would most likely simply tell him it was a personal conversation. And then there was his reaction when Castiel returned after they’d fought off the Levis. But he knows he’s not going to ask. Whatever it was, he’s just going to hope it wasn’t about Cas. He’s not going to think about what it means. He’s found Cas, he’s found the angel, and they’re going home, and that’s all. What happens after is not important.

He’s pretty sure they’ll be able to reach the portal today—what is today, in Purgatory?—if they push. They’ll have to stop so that he can fulfill his promise to Benny, but they should still be able to make it. He and Benny haven’t discussed their deal much since their original agreement; he knows Cas is opposed, but he’s going along with them. He thinks the two men with them have some idea already; it’s part of that fucked-up alternate-universe where everything that happened to them has happened in a story. They seemed pretty aware of what was going on. But being aware and actually seeing…He’s not even sure what it’s going to entail, and neither is Benny. Benny’s said he’s pretty sure it’s nothing like demonic possession, that he’d be more like a dormant presence in Dean’s body. “Think of me as a package you gotta deliver. Maybe a mite heavy, maybe a mite uncomfortable, but you get it where it needs to go.” Either way, it’s got to be taken care of soon. If the portal does, in fact, exist. He only hopes that Benny is right and it will leave him still himself. He has a feeling he’s going to need everything to get them through. To get them all through.

The portal itself…Dean looks over to Cas, who is watching him. He’s worried; there’s a huge fear, lingering just below his consciousness, that he can’t quite grasp onto—that he’s afraid to look at too closely. Dean is certain that Castiel is the one he’ll have to look out for going through the portal. Not just because he’s the one who’s not human. He doesn’t know where Castiel’s mind is these days; he seems back and normal but every time they discuss getting out of Purgatory he holds back, resists, warns them it won’t be possible for him. Dean wants to believe Cas is only being pessimistic, but part of him worries that Cas is going to make sure he doesn’t get out. Because, God, he knows about guilt. And it’s guilt he sees in Cas’ eyes, in the way he turns from them, turns from Dean, protests that he won’t be allowed to leave. And it’s guilt he deserves, but Dean is determined he isn’t going to die for it.

“You should talk to him.” The voice is fuzzy, quiet, behind him. He turns, quickly but not alarmed, recognizing Ben. Ben’s sitting up, watching him. _Probably_ watching him; his hair hangs in front of his eyes. _God damn it, that’s deliberate_ , Dean thinks, and as if in response the man brushes his hair back, wraps it in a band he had around his wrist. He pauses, then squints up at Dean. “When you get out of here. Better that way, maybe.”

“Talk to him about what?”

Ben gives Dean a look as if to say _you know_ , then shifts to his feet, looking over at his fellow traveler. Jeremy seems to still be sleeping, though Dean is now pretty sure Ben wasn’t asleep at all, so he’s not sure about the other guy either. He’s starting to get restless, feeling like they should be moving on, so if those two didn’t sleep it’s on them.

“Is he asleep?” he asks.

Ben shrugs at him. “Looks like it. I don’t know. I just work with him; I don’t know his sleep habits.”

“Not suggesting you did.” Ben laughs at that, then shakes his head. He looks back up at Dean, studying him. He pauses for a long moment, then looks over to Castiel, who is now watching both of them. He looks back at Dean, eyeing him intently. Dean shifts uncomfortably, glancing over to Cas, then back to Ben. He feels as if he’s being evaluated. _Stop staring at me_ , he wants to say. _I don’t know what you want._ But he does know, and he hopes desperately that the man will just shut up, not say anything, just let Dean continue as he is.

“You’re going to have to deal with it, Dean.” Ben nods his head first to Cas, then at Dean.

“Oh, you don’t---That’s not—Cas is--He’s my…my friend.” He stumbles over his words, hating the sound of them, how they revealed the truth in denial.

“I know he is. But why should that mean he isn’t anything else to you?” He walks away, over to Jeremy, and bends over him, reaching out to touch his shoulder. Dean is shaken. _I’m not going to deal with it. There’s nothing to deal with._ The guy didn’t know, didn’t know anything about him and Cas. Probably in his TV show they’re…well…what he suggested. So of course he’d look at them and see what he expected to see. That’s not what’s…that’s not real _here_. What’s real _here_ is that he needs Cas, needs him as a friend and brother, and he’s going to get them home. Dean swallows. And once they’re home…If there’s more, he’ll figure out how to deal with that when they get there. Because they _are_ going to get there.

There’s a sudden shout, and a thud of bodies against the ground. He whirls around to see Ben down on his back on the ground, the man he’d just awoken bent over him, hands around his neck. Ben twists himself around, shoving his friend up. Jeremy growls at that, Dean can hear it as he runs, and he hears Cas and Benny rushing over as well. Before he can reach them Benny has a hand hooked around Jeremy’s arm, pulling him back. Cas is dispassionately examining Ben, who is breathing in harsh ragged breaths and alternately glaring at Jeremy and giving Cas an _I’m fine leave it_ look.

When Dean arrives, they all turn to him. He’s the leader here, he supposes, and mostly that’s good—it means they’re going to do what he decides. But he’s started to think maybe he shouldn’t have to take care of everyone all the time. It’s all he’s done, all he’s known. He doesn’t even really know who _Dean_ is sometimes, other than _the one who takes care of Sammy_. And right now, _the one who’s taking care of Cas_. And now he’s got these others—all right, Benny takes care of himself—to take care of. It’s an awful responsibility, and sometimes he feels as if he only fails over and over and over. He shakes his head and turns to Jeremy, who is unresisting in Benny’s grip, still staring at Ben.

“What the _hell_ , man?” He’s angry; no, he’s furious, because it’s hard enough with every manner of beast on their asses in this place. Benny and Cas had argued, danced around each other in mutual distrust, but there had been no attack, no violence. _Which_ , he muses, _was good, because it would probably have ended up with Benny dead._ “You two got some kind of problem with each other, whatever it is, it can wait. We got problems enough without this shit.”

Jeremy doesn’t answer; he’s still staring at Ben, who is watching him cautiously. Without taking his eyes off Jeremy—as if afraid he’ll leap on him--he addresses Dean.

“He…came after me before. When we, uh, when we first got here. Before we met you. Shoved me up against a tree. I thought we were gonna have to fight.” He gestures, and then he does look over at Dean, uncertainty on his face. “Thought he was going to bite me.”

Dean exhales, looking up at the sky. He doesn’t know what this is, but it’s definitely not good.

“He do that often?”

“No. Not at all. It was,” Ben gestures again, running a hand through his hair, “shocking.”

“And you didn’t think to mention it?”

Ben shrugs almost guiltily. “I can be tiresome. I can guarantee it’s not the first time someone wanted to shove me up against something and call me crazy. And the rest of it, I figured it was…you know, being here.”

“And you?” He figures the other man is probably their best hope of figuring out what has happened, though he’s not sure Jeremy would even know. Benny’s staring at him thoughtfully.

“I just…felt angry. All of a sudden. I just wanted…to…” he trails off, and his eyes finally shift off of Ben, to the ground. He mutters something under his breath, and Dean can’t make it out but he can make out the embarrassed, confused tone. He sees Benny’s hand tighten in alarm.

“You been bit?” Benny growls at the man in his hand. “Anything in this place been at you?”

“No, no, nothing…” Jeremy shakes his head. “I don’t remember how we got here though.”

 _Bit?_ Dean moves forward in alarm. “Benny, what’s—“

“He said he looked at him,” Benny nods at Ben, “an’ wanted to rip his throat out. Said he felt _hungry_.”

Ben shifts, looks up at Jeremy in alarm. He’s already standing a distance away, but he backs up further. He looks both alarmed and uncomfortable. _Which_ , Dean thinks, _is only natural._ Monsters wanting to take a bite out of you was one thing, but this was another. This was bad.

“Do you know how this could have happened? He’d know if he was bitten, I guess—“ he looks at Jeremy, who nods. No bites. No wounds. “—and I don’t know how else a human would get turned.”

“Yeah. I’m an expert on what happens t’humans in Purgatory. Seen ‘em all the time.” Benny’s voice is thick, accent rolling deep in sarcasm. “Y’all are the first humans I’ve seen here. I’m just guessin’. If there were any reason to think it, I’d say he’d just been turned an’ was lookin’ for a first feed. If that can’t be the case, brother, I don’t know what this is.”

They’re all looking to him. Dean sighs. He doesn’t know what this is, doesn’t know how to handle it. If the guy’s been turned somehow—turned to _what_ though? _By_ what?—they’d best deal with it. There’s a cold part of Dean that says this guy’s not necessary, Cas says the other one’s important, we might need Metatron even if we ganked Dick, so we can let it be. Leave _him_ be. Leave him here. But mostly Dean looks at him, at the fear in his eyes. He knows what Dean’s thinking. And Dean looks at Benny, watching him, waiting for his response. Dean thinks Benny could just snap the man’s neck, easy as anything, with a nod from him. He shakes his head. They’re getting out of here, all of them, and maybe this…thing…is just Purgatory, maybe it has that effect on some. They’re _all_ getting out of here, monster or not.

“All right, here’s what’s gonna happen. You,” he indicated Jeremy, “keep your distance from Ben. Watch out for…the hunger or rage or whatever. You feel it coming on, you tell Benny. He’ll get you under control. Think he knows a thing or two about bein’ hungry.” Benny nods slightly at that, releases his grip on Jeremy, who moves warily, nodding at Dean.

“And you—“ Dean addresses Ben, “don’t get too close to him. I don’t know if it’s just you, but you’re the only one he’s attacked. Could be he’s just hungry for you—“

Both men look even more uncomfortable at that. Dean sighs. “Or maybe he just knows you best, or maybe it’s that you’re human. Whatever it is, you seem to be the trigger.”

They acquiesce. Not that there was much question, really. Dean automatically looks up to the sky, but it’s unchanging as always. He doesn’t know how long they’ve rested, if it’s time to be moving on. But they are all roused now, so they may as well start off. He doesn’t think any of them slept well—those of them that do sleep—but that’s over and done. They’ll just have to deal as best they can. He imagines he can feel the pull of that door, the pull of home. He just wants to be there already, be home, and then they’ll sort everything out.

“All right. Benny says we should be able to reach the portal in a few hours, if we head out now. Let’s hope we get left alone. When we find it…” he hesitates, glancing over at Cas, “…when we find it, me and Benny have something to take care of. Might be a bit alarming.” he adds, looking over at Jeremy and Ben. Both of them just watch him coolly. He’s certain now that he’s right about them knowing what’s going on.

“Dean is going to perform a ritual to take the vampire’s soul into his body, so as to give him passage out of Purgatory,” Castiel supplies. Dean glares at him. None of the others seems the least perturbed, though, and that _is_ what he is going to be doing, so he says nothing, but nods.

“Yeah, thanks Cas.”

“I still do not think that is a good—“

“Cas, we’ve been over this. Me and Benny, we got an agreement. It’s final. Turns out you’re right—“

Benny shifts, opens his mouth, then seems to change his mind.

“—we’ll deal with it when we get home.” He realizes that has become his mantra now. _When we get home._ Everything they’re going to have to deal with, everything _he’s_ going to have to deal with, is stacking up. He supposes, in some part, that if they never get home they’ll never have to deal with it, and that’s…well, that would be something. Then he looks over at Cas. _No, I’m getting him home._

Cas just nods, barely perceptibly, and turns away. Dean gathers himself, looks around at his people—his people? Yes, for now, so it would seem. It’s time to move on. They all take in his look, and shift, glancing around, readying themselves for the day’s journey. Benny looks around pensively, figuring out in which direction they need to head. He nods at Dean and inclines his head away from the river.

 _Damn._ Dean had hoped they would be able to follow the river all the way. He’s not sure why, except the running water had seemed like the only thing here that’s normal, that reminded him of home. The trees are strange, unending trunks reaching branchless into a blank unchanging sky. The ground under their feet muffles all sound. But the river gurgles and chimes like water anywhere. He’s going to miss its sound.

They head off, their formation altered from the previous day by the events of the morning. Benny stays to the back, keeping Jeremy near him. Dean stays to the front, trusting that Benny will shout if he gets off course. Between them are Ben and Cas; Cas lingering a bit behind, putting himself between Jeremy and Ben. Dean wonders if Cas is really worried; if there is more of a threat here than he’d thought. He hadn’t objected to Dean’s plan, though, so perhaps he’s just being careful. He’s protective of the man, for sure, and Dean wonders at that a bit. He wonders what Metatron was like, if Cas had a past with him. Maybe they’d been friends. Maybe Cas is holding onto hope of meeting him again. Then he shakes himself. Cas wouldn’t need the archangel’s vessel to see him. No, Cas is being watchful for another reason.

He remembers being told he was Michael’s vessel. The shock, then the fury. _No way. You don’t get to use me as a pawn in your war game._ But he nearly had, had decided to say yes when he’d been so worn down he’d felt it was the only recourse. He’d welcomed it, because he wanted to be over. And he’d seen enough, even in the short time they’d known the angels then, to know that saying _yes_ to being an angel vessel was saying _yes_ to unending torment, to a likely death. What was it Castiel’s guy had said? _Like being chained to a comet._ Being road-dragged behindan angel, everything that you were flayed away, down to the bone. He remembers the guy…the guy who’d been Raphael’s first, his blank and empty eyes, all of him burned away. The archangel’s touch. He knows it’s possible for them to leave a lighter touch, Michael had with his father, but he doesn’t know what Metatron would be. Maybe he’d be gentle, careful, leaving the mind and soul of his vessel intact. More likely he’d be rough, possessive, burning out the soul within as if it were merely fuel for his use. He glances back at Ben. He hopes it won’t come to that, that they’ll be able to simply find a way to send both of them home _. Just because he’s a vessel, doesn’t mean he has to…Maybe we won’t need Metatron._ He doesn’t want to think about what happens if they do need him, if there’s a reason his vessel showed up here, suddenly, in Purgatory.

“Dean?” Cas catches his eye, catches his look at Ben. He knows Cas knows what he is thinking.

“Cas…” he tries to pitch his voice low, but Ben is between them, and he knows he hears. Ben glances at both of them, then seems to decide it would be best to absent himself from the conversation, and affects a studious look into the woods to his left. _Just go ahead, I’m not her_ e, his body language states.

Dean licks his lips, considering, then jerks his head at Cas. _Come here, I need to talk to you._ Cas glances over at Ben, then back at the other two, then joins Dean.

“Cas…what is…what is Metatron like?”

Cas looks at him, silent, as they walk together. “I have not met him, Dean.”

“But you said…you recognized his writing, you knew this guy was his vessel—“

“All angels recognize a vessel, Dean. And we know Metatron’s writing. He _is_ the Scribe.”

“But—“

“Metatron sits—sat—at the right hand of God, Dean. If I had never met Him, why do you think I would have met Metatron?”

“I don’t know. Didn’t he ever get a break? Go on vacation?”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“Figures. So you don’t know…what he’s like.”

Cas stares at him, then flicks his eyes back to his charge, and back again to Dean. It’s disconcerting, the way he stares. Dean’s felt as if he was looking straight into the heart of him, seeing every twist and scar of his soul. Perhaps he is. It’s been like that from the beginning, and Dean mostly tries not to remember that Cas probably knows his soul better than any other being, dragged it struggling and howling out of hell. Castiel had offered to tell him of his rescue and resurrection once. Dean had turned him down with desperate force. It wasn’t just that he didn’t want to remember, or to be told. He can imagine how Cas might have bound him up close, how completely and absolutely Cas must have learned his soul. He doesn’t want to think about how intimate it might have been, the duress of battle and escape.

“You want to know how he would affect his vessel. You’re concerned.” Cas is matter of fact.

“Yeah…you know, I’m thinkin’ if we can, we just send this guy home. Doesn’t seem right, you know, but if we…if we really need…Cas, do you have any idea? Even if you don’t know the guy—“

“Metatron’s first vessel was Enoch. It was in him that Metatron inscribed the tablets.” Castiel’s voice is carefully formal. He refuses to meet Dean’s eyes.

“Enoch? Like Enochian?” All right, so Cas does know a bit about the archangel. Even if he didn’t know him personally, he must know enough. “So…”

Castiel hesitates, takes a careful breath, looks over at Ben again, then, oddly, down at his own hands. His borrowed hands. “An angel requires the particular energy of the vessel’s soul to be envesseled, Dean. This is…not a natural form for us. It takes a great deal of energy to compact ourselves; our true forms are not the same as souls—“

“So a soul’s fuel for you?” It’s about what he’d thought, anyway. It made sense. He knows Cas has used soul energy to recharge, not to mention the overdrive he’d sent himself into with the Purgatory souls. But it doesn’t seem like good news, anyway. “And if an archangel is especially powerful…”

Cas nods. “He will require an especially great draw of ‘fuel’. Metatron…”

He falls silent. Dean waits. _Crap, here it is. He couldn’t just say ‘oh no Dean, we won’t need Metatron, and anyway it would be fine, just a quick pop in and translate, pop back out, this guy’ll be fine.’?_

“Enoch burned from the inside out. He was turned to fire and flame.”

_Yep. There it is. Figures._

“So he’s just another dick, huh? Like Raphael? Like Michael?”

“It is the _nature_ of Metatron, Dean.”

“To be a dick? Yeah, that’s nothing new to you guys, is it?”

“No, it is…it is an inevitable end of holding Metatron’s grace. He is the Recorder of all Creation, Dean. He holds all of existence, all that was or ever will be, within him. His name is an echo of God’s own. You think that Michael, or Lucifer, were powerful. You think that other archangels were fearsome. Heaven’s most terrifying weapons. Metatron is not a weapon, Dean. He was not created to be a warrior. But he is a force more terrifying than all of them.”

“And we’re just gonna offer this guy up to him? A sacrifice?”

“It would help not to consider it like that. We don’t know…it may not come to that.”

Dean glances back at Ben, who is still carefully examining the trees to their side. He’s heard every word, of course, but he seems determined to act as if he has ignored them. “How else we gonna look at it? He’s not even from…This ain’t his fight. I don’t know what the fight is, but seems like there’s always a fight, and this Metatron, ‘warrior’ or not, is bringin’ in people from a whole different universe to fight for him apparently. And don’t give me that ‘it may not come to that’ crap. You said yesterday there had to be a reason he’s here.”

“There may not be a fight, Dean. And yes, I do believe there is a reason Metatron’s vessel has been called for the first time in…eons. But that doesn’t mean that the purpose has to be fulfilled. I hope that it doesn’t.”

Dean’s mouth quirks up a bit at that. “You like him.”

Castiel hesitates thoughtfully. “I have always—admired Metatron. The written word is an interest to me. And I still feel…I am bound to protect a vessel, though I am not…not on good terms with—Though Heaven is closed to me. But he is also rather confrontational.”

“ _Is_ Heaven closed to you?” Dean is curious. Last thing Cas had said, before they landed in Purgatory, was that he hadn’t returned to Heaven. Not that he was cut off. He remembers, vaguely, that other angel—Hester, was her name?—saying he had smote thousands. A massacre, then. He wonders if it’s guilt that kept Cas away, or if the other angels would have it out for him. He supposes if it was him, he would. He smiles ruefully. Or not. He’d tried so hard to hate Cas, after what he’d done to Sam, after he’d disappeared into that reservoir. He’d been angry and bitter and he’d wanted to hate. He felt like hate would have been better, cleaner. Cut Cas out of his family, blacken his memory, cut Cas out of his—Yeah, all right. His heart. But it hadn’t worked. Oh, he’d almost convinced himself it had, but he knew it hadn’t, in those sleepless early mornings when he was staring down into a bottle, Sam restless in the next bed, he’d known it wasn’t hate he felt. He felt lost. Emptied. As if someone had torn his heart out and fed it to him, and he was left with the bitter taste and the hollowness. And then…Cas had been there again, out of nowhere, and it had been something he hadn’t dared ask for, something he hadn’t dared pray for. Castiel. And he wasn’t the same Cas, and that hurt, and it hurt because Dean wanted to get angry, to rage at him, to force him to make things right. And then things would be right again and they would be family and he would no longer be hollow.

And once they were yanked into Purgatory, and Cas had disappeared, he hadn’t stopped. He’d run after Cas, every monster a step closer. _Where’s the angel?_ He asked, and felt that hollow place where his heart had been. _Where is the angel?_ There had been nothing else. He had never thought, until he met Benny, about asking if there was a way out. Castiel had been the only thing he could think of, finding the angel, filling that empty space where his heart had been. Because he’d been so close, in the hours before they’d gone to get Dick. Cas had said that sounds like forgiveness and Dean had known that what he felt wasn’t forgiveness, not yet, but it would be in time. Because Cas was back. His heart was back.

“I can’t go back.” Castiel’s voice is soft. “After what I did…”

Dean nods. There’s some things he thinks he could say, like running won’t help and what if you’d refused to come back when Sam was dying but he decides to leave it. It’s not his business, he doesn’t care all that much about what happens in Heaven, and if Castiel can’t face what he did? Well, he can’t run forever. Dean knows that. He thinks of something else Cas had said.

“He’s confrontational?” He nods to Ben. “Is that something to do with what the two of you were talking about yesterday?”

He senses movement next to him, turns to see that Ben is looking at him, looking vaguely alarmed. He shakes his head slightly at Dean. Dean shakes his head right back. _You don’t get to tell me what I can talk about with Cas. You’ve only just met him._

“There are some things…” Castiel seems to straighten himself. “He wanted to be certain that there would not be complications in my leaving the portal with you.”

It’s a lie. Or at least part of one. Castiel can’t lie for shit, and Dean knows it. But he thinks what Cas said has truth in it; he’s certain that Cas getting through the portal was the subject of the conversation at least. Cas is leaving something out, but Dean decides he doesn’t want to pursue it. He doesn’t want to know what was there.

“All right, Cas.” He turns to Ben. “I know you heard us.”

Ben is still watching him warily, though he seems relieved by the progress of their conversation about his confrontation with Castiel. He opens his mouth, seems to think for a moment, then: “Yeah.”

“We’re gonna do our best to just get you home, all right?”

Ben looks over at Cas briefly. “Cas says I’m not here by accident.”

“Look, Metatron can’t force you to do anything. The angels, they gotta get your say-so to use you. We’ll be sure that—“

“But if it’s something important enough, you’d want me to say yes.” It’s not a question.

Dean is quiet. Yeah, he would. It would be easier, he doesn’t know this guy, and yet…Who is he to tell someone they have to let an angel take them over? Mister “just say no to Michael”? And he knows, even without the apparent nightmare that Metatron will be, what it means to be an angel’s vessel. He feels bound to protect anyone from that fate, from being forced into a yes.

 “Yeah. You would.” Ben nods at him, as if he’d spoken. He swallows, looks away from Dean. “I have a family. A daughter. I’m sorry, I really am, but I’ve got obligations in--” he laughs “—in my own universe. Both the macro and the micro. And I don’t want to die. Especially if I don’t even know what I’m dying _for_.”

He falls silent. Dean thinks he should respond somehow, but he can’t quite think of anything to say. He can’t blame the guy really. Part of him wants to tell him not to be selfish; part of him knows he’d be a hypocrite. He knows about putting family above all.

“And…” Ben continues, addressing the ground they’re walking on, “The idea of letting another being…angel or not…into me, control me, scares the shit out of me.”

“Well, yeah, it’s…”

“I never thought a lot about vessels. Except, you know, what it meant for, like, the angel. Starting to think I should have. Jeremy did. That was always kind of his deal, with the angels. But when I did…Did you ever think, Dean, that possession, angelic or demonic, is often something very close to rape?”

“Angels require consent—“ Castiel interjects hastily, sounding defensive.

Ben looks over at him. “I said _often_ , not _always._ Maybe _sometimes_ would be better. Yeah. So you coerce them. Or in your case—“ he points a finger at Castiel, “—you seduce them. Yes, you did. Jimmy had no idea what he was getting into, did he?”

“The second time, he understood—“

“The _second_ time he wanted to save his daughter. I would do anything to keep my daughter safe. So would Jimmy. So would any father—any _parent_ worth the title. That’s not a real _choice_ , Cas.”

“It’s the way the universe works.”

“Yeah. Well. The universe sucks.” Ben turns away from both of them a bit. Dean can see the anger in his stance. “That’s why I never wanted to think about the…the people who became vessels for angels. Thought about it a bit, with Sam and Lucifer. Because that seemed fair enough, to think of Lucifer as abusive. But I _loved_ you, Cas. Or, you know, I loved…the you that I knew. The fictional you. Writing you is…” he sighs, “It’s good. I never wanted to see you that way. I never liked to think about what you did to Jimmy. Willing or not.”

“I am not—“ Cas seems off balance. “I have followed the rules.”

Ben’s very quiet. “I know you have.”

He turns away from both of them, pacing back until he’s between them and Jeremy. Dean moves to call out to him— _I told you to stay away from him_ —but he settles in there, keeping his distance between both pairs, Dean and Cas, Jeremy and Benny. Dean swallows, looks back to Cas, who avoids his gaze. It’s not that he hadn’t thought about it, not quite like that, but yeah. The idea of something taking over his body, controlling him, not being able to do anything about it—it turns his stomach. He realizes that, like Ben, he doesn’t like to think about the person that had existed before they became an angel’s vessel. Hell, he _met_ Jimmy. Spent time with him. But his mind shies away from thinking of him when he’s with Cas. He doesn’t even know if Jimmy’s still alive; after all that’s happened to Cas, he hopes not. But there’s what Cas said about angels requiring soul-fuel to be in vessels, so...probably some Jimmy still in there. _Shit’s complicated_ , he thinks, settling into the silence and the rhythm of his pace.

The day is quiet and calm. Dean is bemusedly grateful for the peace; it’s as if all the denizens of Purgatory are leaving them a clear path out. _It doesn’t make sense for them to do that_ , he thinks, _because they should want to keep us here._ Three humans, real human bodies made of flesh and blood, and the angel that once dragged them all out of here to use them as rocket fuel. The beasts of Purgatory should have been teeming around them, desperate to keep them here. It’s suspicious that they are not. He reminds himself that most likely none knew of their plan; he’d not heard one of them, of the many he’d executed in his search for Cas, mention a way out. Benny is apparently the only one who knows, and he has refused to tell Dean from where this knowledge came, saying only that “they told me.” And when he asked who “they” were, Benny just shook his head. Dean’s not sure if Benny doesn’t know, or won’t say. He suspects it’s a bit of both.

They are several hours into their trek, in Purgatory’s endless day, when Benny calls out to Dean.

“We’re close, brother.”

Dean looks around. They’ve travelled a long way from the river, and have been gradually and steadily climbing upward for a while. He can clearly see now that they are—have been, all this time—in a wide valley that ahead of them narrows into a V , hemmed in by sunken cliffs. The cliffs look climbable, if that’s where they need to head, but he doesn’t see anything. He opens his mouth to shout back to Benny when he feels it. There’s a breeze. Just perceptible, blowing past his ears, ruffling through his hair. But there has never been a breeze, not a breath of movement in the air, in all the time he’s been in Purgatory. He turns, looking in the direction from which the wind is blowing, and sees nothing.

“The other direction, Dean.” Cas’ voice is hushed. “It seems the vampire was telling the truth.”

“Yeah, thanks, Cas.” Benny doesn’t bother to hide his disdain.

Dean turns, and sees it. It’s at the top of one of the sunken cliffs, a ways in the distance, but still tantalizingly close. It pulses electric blue and white, tendrils of light reaching out, drifting in the air, reaching…He startles, and looks. Yes, reaching in their direction. As he watches, he seems to see a black eye, a door, cycle open and then shut, open and then shut, calling to them. _Door’s open. Get out of here, you who don’t belong._ He wants to run up to it, tear his way up that cliff and through the door before it vanishes. He’s afraid it’s not really there, this door, afraid that if they hesitate it will be gone as if it were never there. But he’s the leader, and he’s made promises, and now the time has come to fulfill one of them.

“Benny,” he calls, and indicates that they should all gather together. They cluster in a loose circle. Dean notes that Jeremy seems pale— _more_ pale than before. His eyes flicker from Ben, to Dean, back to Ben, and back to Dean again. He seems restless, unable to settle. Dean looks over to Benny, jerks his head towards Jeremy. _What’s going on?_ Benny shrugs a bit, shakes his head.

“We’re doin’ all right, brother. We just gotta him outta here, maybe he’ll be fine. I’ve been thinking,” he looks around, “you know, all them souls here, jus’ kinda…fill everything. Seep right into the ground, into the air. We think ourselves bodies, cause that’s what we know, but when a body is struck down, it goes right back into soul. Bleeds itself into the ground, into the air. Maybe he’s been breathin’ that hungry monster soul.”

“We all have. Hell, I’ve been here…lot longer than them. I’m fine.”

Benny shrugs. “Could be he’s sensitive.”

“Great. So we got a vamp, a vessel, an angel, and—“ he shakes his head “--someone allergic to monsters. And me, well…We got ourselves a hell of a ragtag team.”

Dean shrugs, looks around at all of them. They are looking at him with varying degrees of amusement or bemusement. He holds his hand out to Benny. “So. We gonna do this thing?”

Benny nods and steps forward, and Dean turns to Ben. “Need my knife for this.”

He hands it to him, and Dean pulls off his jacket, pulls up his sleeve. The knife presses against his inner arm, and he starts to draw it up.

“Stop. Wait.” It’s Jeremy, and he’s reaching out to grab Benny’s arm. Benny looks to him, a bit perturbed.

“I told you, I’m reformed. I ain’t a danger. I got my reasons to get topside again.”

“Yes. I know. We know what they are. Benny…” Jeremy looks over at Ben, who is watching him calmly, neither encouraging nor discouraging. “Benny, your Maker…”

“Andrea’s a vampire.” Ben speaks up. “The Old Man turned her after he had you killed. I’m sorry, Benny. You can avenge her, but…”

“How do you know?” Benny advances on Ben. “How do you know? I saw her die. I saw it with my own eyes. She was everything to me, and he killed her. He made me watch. All the years I’ve been here, every day, I see that.”

“I know because I wrote it. Because everything here is happening just as we wrote it. He changed his mind. Andrea’s not dead, Benny, but she’s not the same. If you wanna go back…you should know what you’re going for.”

Benny shakes his head, turns away from Ben, from all of them. He walks away from the circle, a few steps, then stops, head lowered. “Leave me be a bit, brother. I got to think on some things.”

Dean sighs. This is going to take a while, and he’s not sure what’s happened— _Andrea?_ But they aren’t going anywhere until it’s settled, so he waves at the others.

“Might as well settle in.” He stares at Ben. “What was that about Andrea? How do you know that’s what happened—what’s gonna happen? You could be wrong. Maybe things don’t happen the same here.”

“Everything so far has.” Jeremy points out, “except for us being here. We thought…Well, we thought maybe we could try, you know, try to fix what we could.”

“Force some better outcomes.” That’s Ben, who’s watching Benny with what seems to be regret.

“Has it worked?”

They both shrug in response.

“Don’t know yet. We’ll have to get out of here first.” Jeremy laughs shakily.

At that moment Benny returns to them. _That was quick_ , Dean thinks. He holds his hand out to Dean.

“I’m ready, brother.” He looks at Jeremy, at Ben. “I don’t know if you’re right. If you are…Could be that’s all the more reason for me to go back, to clear out that nest. Because if he’s done that to her, made her…” he stops, unable to continue for a long moment. “If he’s done that to here, that is so much worse than killin’. I know it. I never expected Andrea to be there for me, back in the world, but I can get rid o’ the one that did that to her.”

Dean draws the knife again. This time there is no interruption as he runs the knife down his arm, cutting a slash, an opening. A doorway. He looks up at Benny.

“Catch you on the flipside.”

Benny shakes his head, looks around at all of them. “Let’s get goin’. Hour’s late.”

He draws his breath, recites the incantation as Benny had told it to him. Benny shimmers, shivers, the illusion of body and flesh breaking down. Then he is glowing ash, red and orange and black, fluttering and flowing and surging down into the gouge in Dean’s arm. He floods in, and he’s hot and cold and Dean grits his teeth against the pain. He’s aware that they’re all watching him, and he struggles not to cry out. He can feel the vampire’s cold inside him, numbing his arm, and as he watches he sees that red-orange glow shift and twist under his skin. Strange, that the vampire’s soul looked like fire and felt like ice. He pulls his sleeve down, picks up his jacket and shrugs it on.

 “Are you all right, Dean?” Castiel reaches out, touches his shoulder with concern…or perhaps to feel for the foreign soul within.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, Cas. I’m still me.” Cas nods at that, and Dean feels him squeeze his shoulder before letting go. He doesn’t know what to make of that; is it an _I’m sorry I distrusted Benny_ , an _I’m worried about this_ , or something else? He reaches out, pats Cas’ shoulder in return, then clears his throat, remembering the others, embarrassed.

 “All right, let’s go. Like he said, hour’s late.”

They head for the portal. Dean quickly realizes that it’s further away than it seems. He positions himself between Jeremy and Ben, though he’s not quite sure how much good that is—Jeremy seems to be giving him the same barely concealed look of anger and hunger that he had been giving to Ben. Castiel seems to have no effect on him though, and soon Dean beckons to him, leans over to whisper in his ear.

“Cas, keep an eye on him, all right? Both of us seem to be affecting him, “ and he indicates Ben.

“You _are_ both human,” Cas agrees, nodding. “I will watch out for him.”

“Watch _over_ him.” Dean corrects. “Just…keep him safe.”

“Thank you.” Jeremy says behind them. “I’m…I’ll be all right. But thank you, Cas.”

Cas nods to him, to Dean, then moves to position himself nearer to Jeremy. They have reached the edge of the cliff now, and it’s much steeper than it seemed at a distance. Dean looks up at it, at the portal impossibly high above. It seemed so much closer from further away. He has a sudden image of them climbing, the portal retreating into the sky, forever tantalizing them. He shakes his head. It’s there, it’s real, and they’re gonna get there. He’s starting to let himself hope that maybe, just maybe, they’ll both—he corrects himself, they’ll all—get home. They’re going to be all right. For the first time in a very long time, everything is going to go right.

It’s at that moment that they explode out of the sky, the ground. There is no warning; Dean has a brief glimpse of Castiel spinning around, terror on his face. _He didn’t know_ , he thinks. _Didn’t sense them._ They’re surrounded now, the dark and twisting flood resolving itself into imitations of human forms, human forms with heads that are little more than huge, hooked jaws. Leviathan, again, and more than he’s ever seen. Nothing is going to go right, after all. He pulls his good blade from his jacket, feels a sudden scrabbling at his jeans. He looks over; Ben is pulling his small knife, still smeared with his blood, from his pocket in a panic. He feels Cas’ hand on him suddenly, grabbing, pulling. There is a crack, and suddenly they are at the top of the cliff, looking down at the valley floor. The Leviathan in human form run at them, run at the cliff, gnashing their gruesome jaws, then falling back into a dark, oily flood, flowing around the cliff base. He gasps, trying to catch his breath.

“Cas, if you coulda’ done that all the time—you coulda just zapped us here from the beginning?”

“I didn’t know where we were going Dean. And it was not advisable for me to…zap…anywhere here. It was extremely likely that I would draw more Leviathan to me with such…displays.”

“Displays?”

“Movement at that speed requires a great deal of energy. It is visible to them. It would have called them to me.” He pauses. “To us.”

“All right then.” Nothing to do about it, anyway. They were here, and it seemed the Levis weren’t rushing up the hillside to get to them, though he supposed it was only a matter of time. The portal is close; Castiel has brought them about twenty yards from it. He looks over at the others. Castiel is watching the portal pensively; the other two are watching Castiel, twin expressions of worry on their faces. He wonders at that for a moment, then shakes himself. Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter now. They’re here. Close. So close. _Home._

“Come on!”

They try to move quickly, but here the wind pushes them, as if the portal, seeing them approach, has turned from luring them to driving them away. It’s hard to breathe; Dean gasps and coughs and hears the others do the same. He feels an arm over his shoulder; looks over and it’s Cas, looking at him with concern. He shakes his head, _I’m fine_ ; but he doesn’t move to remove the arm. He wraps his own arm around Cas, suddenly afraid. _We’re going home. We’re going home. Everything is all right. Everything’s going to be all right, everything’s going to be fine, just this once. Please._ He glances back at the other two, and sees that they are following, hands clasped like little children, staring wide-eyed at the howling doorway. Whatever is happening to Jeremy seems to have been subsumed in the moment; he looks well again. Dean has a fleeting moment of relief. At least he wouldn’t have to be worried about the guy going monster in these final moments, because at this point that’s the only thing he can see getting in their way. And it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.

“You feeling all right now?” he shouts to Jeremy, who reluctantly tears his gaze from the portal to Dean, and nods.

“I feel…Better. Like I did when I first got here—it’s, you know, it’s still there but it’s—“ he releases Ben’s hand to wave his hand at the air, motioning down, “you know, _under_.”

“Keep it there.” Dean thinks for a moment, then reaches back. “Grab my hand, one of you. Keep each other’s hand, too. We’re gonna go through this all together.”

He hears Ben laugh behind him, and he can’t help grinning back at him in return. _Safety first, children! Hold hands as you go through the Purgatory portal._ Cas just gives them both a look of confused annoyance.

As they approach the portal, the hair on his arms stands up. An electric hum fills the air; the wind howls and shrieks as it is pulled into the now violently pulsating light of the portal. Ben comes around to the other side of Cas, and grasps his hand. He leans over, and shouts to him,

“Remember, Castiel.”

Cas looks at him, and nods. “I’ll do my best.”

Dean looks at them both. “What the hell?” His voice is hoarse. He can hardly draw a breath, but he needs to know. He needs to know what this exchange is, what’s going on. What secrets these two are keeping. Ben just shakes his head.

“You have your promises to keep. Cas has his own.”

It’s too late, then, too late to do anything, to ask what this promise is, though by the way Ben is staring at him he thinks it has something to do with him. Something Cas has to do for him. Or has he asked Cas not to do something? There’s no time anymore, and he just has to hope that Cas will keep this promise, whatever it is.

The pressure of the portal is a physical pain, pushing at his bones, a blunt fist to his chest. His ears clamp shut, then pop painfully. He sees the others, and knows they are feeling the same, except Cas, who is staring into the heart of the portal. He grasps more tightly at Cas’ arm on his shoulder, pulls them forward. It’s time. They’re going home.

When he hits the light, the edge of the portal flares in a brilliant explosion of silence. Everything seems to turn inside out; he sees through the portal and on the other side the sky is black, the trees white. Twisting shapes flow and scurry through the skies; the ground itself heaves and rolls, a great beast turning in its sleep. _It’s all alive_ , he thinks in a kind of ecstasy. _All of it._ _Purgatory isn’t a place, it’s a beast._ He leans into it, the black hole at the heart of it, the doorway home, and feels a shock as the breath is punched out of him. He feels the pressure increase impossibly, agonizingly, and he thinks he hears himself scream, but it’s a long way away and he can’t feel anything in his lungs, his throat. He grasps tighter at Cas’ arm, tugging _. I didn’t come all this way to let you go now._ They’re nearly there. Nearly home.

There’s a sudden shrieking whine, and he feels himself pushed. No, he’s not pushed; he’s being pulled, pulled backwards. _No_ , he thinks, _no, don’t you dare. Don’t you dare, you bastard._ He turns, grasps Castiel’s hands with both of his. Cas is slipping backward; the other men have moved ahead of him now, they’re almost abreast of him, and Cas is falling back. No. Being _pushed_ back. The portal is resisting him, pushing him back, pushing him away from Dean.

“No! Cas, hold on, we’re gonna get you—“ He turns to the others. “Help me, damn it!”

They reach out, grasp at Cas. Dean pulls desperately, and it’s agony now; he can feel the portal tightening around them, trying to close, trying to keep the angel. He screams. He screams at Cas, at the others at his side— _pull, you sonsabitches, you’re not even trying, pull him._ He screams at himself. He screams at Purgatory, howls at it like it is a wild beast bent on devouring his heart. And then Castiel is yanking his hands back, both of them, out of Dean’s hands. He stares into Castiel’s eyes, and the hollowness fills his body, his mind. _No. No._ They’re going home, both of them, one thing is going to go right, just this one goddamn thing. They’re going home.

“Dean, _go_.” He is shoved, shoved with the force of the angel’s strength, and he struggles to resist it, to lean back into it, to catch Castiel’s hand again, pull harder this time, pull him through. _If he just pulls hard enough…_ Dimly, he sees movement beside him, another voice.

“Cas, you promised—“

“ _Go._ ” And at that moment there is a deafening crack, and he is whipped backward, landing with a thud on his back. It is very dark, and very quiet. No, not quiet. Not quite. He can hear sounds, and it takes him a long moment to place them. The sound of wind in trees. The creaking of branches. The scraping, chirping hum of crickets. The sounds of life. The sounds of the world. He draws a breath, and it’s sweet and real. He rolls over, kneeling, and stares up at the night sky. For a moment it seems alien, flooded with light, with stars; the moon a strange eye, half-closed. Then the familiar constellations settle into place. He’s home. He closes his eyes. He never prays anymore, except to Cas, but now he directs a longing _please_ at anyone, anything that might be listening. _We were both supposed to get out. We were both supposed to get home. Please, I fought so hard._

After a moment, he rises to his feet, a little unsteady, but better than he’d expected. In that final moment it had felt as if his bones were being crushed; now there’s little more than a dull ache. He examines his arm and grimaces. Blood has made his sleeve sodden, stained his jacket. He feels Benny in there still, pulsing and twisting.

“At least some of us made it, anyway,” he mutters, looking around. He doesn’t expect to see anything. It’s just him and Benny, it seems, and didn’t he always know that was how it was going to end? All that time, running after him, _where’s the angel_ , and it seemed he’d been asking that question even before Purgatory. And he’d found him, he’d found the angel, his Cas. And then he’d lost him again. He’d let him go. He’d failed. _I should have tried harder._

There’s movement behind him, and he whirls, hope flooding him, but he sees the flash of reflected moonlight around the other man’s eyes. Glasses. It’s Jeremy, then, and Dean feels both bitter and relieved that the other two, at least, had made it. He walks towards the man, who is standing in an apparent daze, staring down at something in his hands. Something dark is dripping from them, and as Dean approaches he can see something spattered on his clothes, dripping from his hair, his face.

 _Jesus._ He breaks into a run. It’s a sight he knows, a sight he’s all too familiar with, and he shoves the thoughts of Cas down; there’s no room for them here, no room for them now. Because this man is hurt. Maybe hurt bad—there’s a lot of blood.

“How bad are you hurt?” He reaches Jeremy, gives him a quick glance. There’s blood all over him; splashed on his face, dripping down his cheeks like tears, staining his clothes. It’s bad. It’s definitely bad. He’s not sure how the man is still standing. He reaches out.

“Not me.” Jeremy doesn’t look up from the thing in his hand. Dean can’t quite make out what it is; some spidery shape, some tiny nightmare of Purgatory. “It closed.”

“Yes.” The man’s in shock, Dean thinks. “We got out on the right side. Cas…”

It hurts almost too much to continue, but he pushes forward. “It wouldn’t let Cas through. But we’re here. Now you gotta let me take a look at you, then we need to go find…find Ben, ‘cause he might be hurt too…”

“It closed.” Jeremy repeats, and he looks up at Dean. “I’m not hurt.”

“Yeah, you are. You’re…in shock, or something. I know. But we’re here. Come on, I gotta get a look at you, you gotta be hurting pretty bad.”

“You don’t understand. _It closed on him._ ”

And Dean takes in the blood, Jeremy’s staring eyes, his insistence that _it isn’t him_ , that he isn’t the one who’s hurt. Suddenly he doesn’t want to look down at what he’s cradling in his hands, that thing that isn’t a spider, that thing that’s dripping dark blood onto the ground.

“He’s dead. It closed on him. He reached out to Cas, and it closed. It tore him open. I saw. I tried to pull him back. The blood…He’s dead. He must be. He’s dead.” It comes out in a shuddering rush, and Dean unthinkingly reaches out to the man, grasps his shoulder. It’s sticky with blood. He doesn’t pull away. Jeremy looks back down at the thing in his hands. “I tried to pull him back. I tried. I was holding his hand.”

And Dean does look down then, at the thing Jeremy holds in his hands. It’s a hand. It lays there, fingers curled as if trying to grasp still. Blood, cooling and congealing, drips and hangs in gruesome streamers. Bone gleams through the torn and ragged edge of the wrist. It was not the clean, quick cut of something caught in a slamming door. The flesh is mangled, torn meat, as if it had been bitten off by a ravening beast. _Purgatory isn’t a place, it’s a beast,_ he thinks, and something inside him screams.

 

 


	4. Interlude (Sam)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam has a new life, a home with Amelia and Riot. Then someone comes to him and he begins to realize he should have been looking for his brother. And maybe it's still not too late...

It’s late evening when he gets home. _Home._ Still such a strange and wonderful idea; his own house. Sometimes when thoughts of before rise up to snarl and snap at him he holds the image of this place up in his mind, a shield against pain. _You abandoned Dean. Abandoned your brother._ No, no he hadn’t. Dean was gone. Gone. His family, his life before—all gone. All gone. He has to bury it. This, here, now, is what’s real. Safe and comfortable and real and unchanging. His home. His home with Amelia and Riot. His _home_.

He hangs up his keys beside the door and whistles for the dog.

“Riot? Hey, Riot?” Riot hasn’t shown, he calls and whistles again, reaching to flip on a light.

The figure sitting on the couch is still shadowed even with the light on. It’s got a hand on Riot’s collar, stroking the dog. Sam’s hand immediately goes to his hip; he realizes suddenly, painfully, that he is unarmed. And he feels a wave of rage against this—whatever---that has invaded his life. Because that isn’t his life anymore, monsters and beasts and demons. Get out, he wants to tell it. Get out, I’m through. I’ve earned my rest.

Then the figure turns to look at him, and he freezes. Anger is flooded out by guilt.

“I called you.”

 He swallows. “I know.”

“You never answered. At first…I thought you’d come right away. Then I thought you must be dead. Because there could be no other reason why you wouldn’t come running. It’s what you _do_ , isn’t it?” The figure strokes at Riot’s head, scratching at the dog’s ears.

“I…” He wants to explain. “I—I threw my phones out. I don’t do that anymore.”

The hands stop. Riot whines and twists around, but the figure doesn’t move. “You should have finished what you started. You left me.”

“I know. I know I did—I should have—“ He stops. It’s awkward, watching the shadowed figure. He makes a decision, strides into the room and flicks on the overhead light. Kevin blinks up at him.

He looks like hell. He’s gotten his hair cut sometime since he was taken. His clothes are worn, torn, as if he’s been wearing the same thing for months. Probably he has. Kevin’s thinner now, rangy and muscular, and his eyes are cold as he turns them on Sam. He looks as if years, not months, have passed since Sam last saw him. Sam’s both comforted and alarmed, momentarily, by the sight of the gun slung on the couch next to him. A second look tells him it’s plastic; a toy squirt gun. He shakes his head. Kevin notices his look and pats the gun.

“Holy water.”

Sam’s breath rushes out in a quick laugh. “Good idea. We never thought of that one.”

“It’s not perfect, but it helps.” Kevin examines Sam. “ _You_ look good.”

It’s an accusation. Sam shifts, looking around, unsure of what to say. Kevin adds, “I guess not being on the run will do that for you.”

He feels a snag of anger at that. “Kevin, I’ve been on the run most of my life. This is, this is the first time in a long time that I’ve stopped.”

Kevin just glares at him. “Then you know how I feel.”

Sam shakes his head, and Kevin continues, “Anyway, what makes you say you’ve stopped running?” He gestures at the house around him. “Maybe you’ve been running all your life, but you’re still running now. You’re hiding.”

Sam collapses onto the couch, away from Kevin. Riot wags his tail, shifts over to him gratefully with a soft whine. He scratches at the dog’s ears, trying to think of what to say. “Kevin…I don’t…I’ve lost my brother before. And I got…I got in a really bad way. Some pretty awful shit happened because I, because I couldn’t deal with losing Dean. So yeah, maybe I’m still running. Maybe I’m hiding from what I might do if I let myself…I don’t trust myself. I _can’t_ trust myself.”

Kevin’s thoughtful. His anger seems to have subsided a little. “If you know what you did wrong before, why wouldn’t you do something else this time? Looks like you just gave up. Besides, how bad could it have been?”

“Well…I lost Dean—he—he made a crossroads deal to bring me back, I died, and he—he went to hell for me. And I kind of—I lost it. Fell in with some people I shouldn’t have. And in the end…I, uh, I freed Lucifer. Started the Apocalypse.”

Kevin stares at him. “I found out I’m a prophet, got held hostage by beasts with giant jaws from before the world began, then got kidnapped by the King of Hell and his demons. And that’s still the strangest story I’ve ever heard.”

“It’s true.”

“Didn’t say I didn’t believe it.” He pauses. “If you could do things differently now—not this—but if you’d looked for Dean, what would you do?”

Sam shakes his head. “I wouldn’t know where to begin. I thought—at first I thought either whatever killed Dick just obliterated Dean, too. And Cas. That they’re just totally gone. So there’s nothing to look for. Or…”

“Or?” Kevin leans toward him. Sam shifts, looking down at his hands.

“Purgatory. It’s where Leviathan came from--” Kevin nods at this, curtly. _I already know that_ , his look says. “—so I guess it makes sense that that’s where he’d go when he was killed. And, taking…taking Dean and Cas with him.”

“So why did you run? If you know where he is, why didn’t you, “ Kevin gestures as if opening a door, “find a way to get him out? Open Purgatory?”

Sam laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “I have no idea if he’d even be alive—I mean, he could have been…they could have gotten there dead. And opening Purgatory, it’s not that simple. Opening Purgatory is kind of how those things got out in the first place.”

“You should have tried, though.” Kevin’s voice is fierce, angry. “You knew where he was, the whole time, and you didn’t even try to look. You knew I was looking for you, too, and you didn’t answer, didn’t look for me either. You’re not burying your old life, Sam. You’re _running_ from it.”

“You said that already.” He turns to Kevin. “Are you just here to show me where I went wrong? Maybe I _am_ running. Okay? But what’s done is…it’s done. Dean’s _gone_.”

“I came because I have something. Something you might want to know about.”

“What?” Against his will, Sam feels a frisson of hope.

“Another tablet. A demon tablet.” Kevin grins. “You wanna close the Gates of Hell?”

The hope fades and dies as quickly as it had sprung up. Sam didn’t know what he’d expected; for Kevin to tell him he knew a risk-free way to open Purgatory and get Dean—and Cas, Cas too—out? Nothing could possibly be so easy, but for a second, he’d hoped…He swallows roughly, surprised by how much it hurts. He forces his attention onto what Kevin has said. A demon tablet…

Kevin eyes him curiously. “You thought I’d say I know how to open Purgatory, didn’t you? Like maybe that was just some new prophet-knowledge God gave me?”

Sam looks away, doesn’t answer. Kevin watches him. “You could still look for him, you know. Maybe there’s another way to open Purgatory, one that’s not as bad. Maybe he’ll find a way out from there himself. I could help.”

Sam’s head snaps up at the offer. “I thought you said—“

Kevin taps his head. “You said you didn’t even try to look. If we both worked at it, we might be able to find a way—“

“No.” _It’s over. Dean’s gone. My family’s gone. Let me be_ here _, let me move on, please._ “Kevin, about this other tablet…you say it’s about demons? So it tells you how to close the gates of hell?”

“Among other things. Crowley wanted me to translate it. It had a recipe for a demon killing bomb. That’s how I was able to get away from him.” Kevin smiles with almost sincere humor. “I tricked him.”

“That’s something.” Sam sighs, buries his head in his hands. “So, you have this demon tablet with you?”

Kevin gives him a look— _do you think I’m that stupid_ —and shakes his head. “No. I put it in a safe place—a secure place. They’d expect to find it on me. They won’t look where I put it.”

“You know, if they caught you…Crowley would just torture it out of you.”

“They’re not going to catch me.”

Sam has no reply to that. Part of him—most of him—wants to let it go. Tell Kevin _, I’ll help you find some people who might be able to help you stay off Crowley’s radar, but this isn’t my life now._ Yet, at the same time, he’s starting to think… _one last job. Close off hell. No more demons._ Then he could be done, walk away, no longer be running, no longer be hiding from the specter of his old life.

But the thing is, he’s _never_ going to be able to stop running. He knows it. _You could have looked. You should have looked._ Waking up mornings, barely remembered nightmares icing his veins, telling Amelia, _it’s my brother, it’s still very painful._ And she held him, because she understood what it was to lose someone you loved, and he never told her it wasn’t the _losing_ so much as the fear that his brother wasn’t truly lost, that he was out there somewhere. That he could come home if Sam would only _look_ , would only open the door.

He’s torn. He knows Kevin’s waiting for an answer, any response, but he can’t speak. He wants to say, just the demon tablet, okay, we’ll go get that. But something in him, something he’s been numbing for the last six months, is slowly waking up. Find Dean. You know where to look. And Kevin will help you. He shakes his head, _no, please_. There’s only pain there; only the collapse of the new world he had so carefully constructed here with Amelia, with Riot. If he opens himself up to hope, to the hunt, all that will be waiting for him at the end is a monster called Sam Winchester. He’s been there before. He doesn’t want to go back. He won’t go back.

“Kevin…” He sighs. “I think—I want to find Dean.”

 It’s not what he’d intended to say. He’d opened his mouth to say “Let’s get the demon tablet.” And all his longing for his brother, the guilt for not searching, not trying to find a way when he knew where he must be, rushed out. He swallows, realizing that now that it’s out there, he doesn’t want to take it back. “Will you help me?”

“I said I would. We may need him, anyway. Who knows what’s involved in shutting the gates of Hell?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t answer your calls. That I didn’t come for you.”

Kevin looks at him. “I don’t forgive you, Sam.”

Sam startles at that, looks over. He doesn’t know why he expected anything else; it’s not as though he expected an _it’s okay Sam it turned out all right._ He sighs again. “I know.”

“So.” Kevin straightens up. “Where do we start?”

He’s all business now, or at least giving the appearance of it. Sam marvels at the change since he’d last seen him. Yeah, most of it’s not good, most of it’s the _running too hard and seen too much_ look he knows all too well. But there’s a toughness there now too, and something else, something that takes Sam a moment to place. Then he realizes: Kevin knows exactly who he is. He knows exactly what he should be doing. He hadn’t come here as a scared kid on the run. He’d come here to recruit Sam. To wake him up. To make _him_ stop running.

“The cabin.“ He looks at Kevin, who nods— _I remember._ Sam looks around. “It’s a long drive, few days from here. Maybe we could start off in the morning, we’ve got a guest room, you can—“

A phone rings. It rings, and rings, then falls silent. And then another begins to ring.

They stare at each other, then look down at the phones Kevin had stacked on the table. Sam lunges down, paws through the phones. He knows exactly which one’s ringing now—no, too late, that one’s silent now too. He waits, hand hovering, and pounces when another begins to chirp. That one, right there. He picks it up.

“Sam, Crowley—“ Kevin begins urgently. Sam waves him off. He looks at the caller’s name, and flips the phone open.

“Hello.”

“Get to the cabin.” He’s brusque; there’s no preamble, no elaborate hello, no explanation. Sam closes his eyes.

“Dean.” It’s a question, it’s a prayer, it’s an accusation.

“Just get here.”

And then there is silence. 


	5. Long Live the Dead (Castiel)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel is still in Purgatory with Ben.

Purgatory is a beast, and it holds onto its prey with jealous hunger. It spits out those it cannot stomach, and snaps its jaws shut on those it wishes to keep. Sometimes there are those caught between those jaws, and it swallows them too, keeping them torn and bloody in its roiling belly. It is a starving beast, and it does not care how things should be, how hard the little creatures in its gullet scrabble to escape, to make everything turn out all right.

The portal snaps shut before Castiel. His last glimpse is of Dean’s horrified face, angry and betrayed. Betrayed, again, by Cas. He remembers his promise _. If I can, I’ll go through._ He’d felt the portal closing around him, had shoved Dean away, shoved them all away. _I won’t go at risk of Dean’s life._ That had been it, that had been all. He looks down at the man at his feet. He’d kept his promise to him. But the man had not accepted it, had reached out, tried to drag him out.

The man lies on his side on the ground, bleeding. The closing of the portal tore open his side from shoulder to hip; Castiel can see the bone gleam of ribs through the torn flesh. He is flayed open, and blood seeps from his wounds sluggishly, but these are not the wounds that will kill him. His right hand ends in a jagged stump, and it is from here that most of his blood rushes, heart still pumping blood to a nonexistent hand.

Castiel looks down the cliff; the Leviathan that had pursued them in the valley have regrouped and are beginning to swarm up. He looks back down at the man. If there is something to be done, it must be done quickly; he has little time. If the Leviathan are near enough they will simply snag onto him, onto them, as he tries to run. He gathers up the man in his arms. The man is breathing in shallow, shuddering gasps, his body jerking in shivering tremors. He stares through Castiel. He is awake, yet not aware. Castiel isn’t certain if he understands what is happening, really; he feels confusion and pain rolling off the man, but he has no time to quiet it.

He knows where they have to go. It is a risk, of course, anything he does here, in this place, is a risk. But it is all they have. He moves—and first he is _here_ and then they are _there_ , less than the beat of a heart, a single breath. They are on the riverbank, the place where they had camped only hours before--all of them. Castiel feels regret, thinking of Dean, thinking of those hours. His wing wrapped around him, protecting. He does not tell Dean when he wraps him in a wing. It’s his way of keeping him safe. He doesn’t think Dean would understand. He lays the man in his arms down near the edge of the river, where water mixes with the dirt to make a muddy mix.

He touches the man, on the forehead, a light and gentle touch, but the man shivers. Castiel can feel the soul inside, fluttering, now tied only tenuously to the body, seeking escape. He hesitates for only a moment. It is an intimate thing, to touch a soul, and often agonizing. But it’s something that must be done, here and now. He reaches out with his center, his grace, and lets tendrils of it enfold the soul. The soul shrinks, contracts in terror and pain. It feel-think-wants _escape_. He tightens his grace around it, soothing, binding it into the body. It shrieks, and the pain echoes through his own grace. He wants to pull back, pull out, but he knows that if he does now the man will die. He closes his vessel’s eyes, and lets himself…be. He is his grace, and he is light, and he is a vibration in a thousand dimensions. He lets all of this flow into the soul, wrapping around it. Slowly, slowly—and the soul slowly retracts, settles back into the body, still clinging on to tendrils of his grace, gripping them like a safety blanket.

He withdraws. There is still bodily healing to be done, and the river’s mud will be necessary. He touches his finger to the man’s forehead again; for a healing of body, not soul. The wound in the man’s side knits up, the gash in his shoulder closes. The flow of blood from the stump of his arm slows, slows, but does not stop. There is precious little time, and the man has precious little blood to lose, but he cannot stop the flow entirely. Nor can he heal the wrist as is; he _could_ , could close living flesh over the torn wrist, but he can do more. He gathers mud from the riverbank, shapes it to the man’s wrist. He can heal, but there must be substance to reform the flesh. The mud grows reddish with blood. He touches the mud-hand he has formed, the man’s wrist.

It is the work of a moment. Cold mud is turned to cold bone, tendon, nerves, and flesh, skin webbing and knitting itself over all of it. Blood begins to flow through it, and he holds it until it is warm, and the healing is complete. When it is finished he touches the man again, lightly, restoring lost blood, speeding up production of blood cells for a bare instant. Then he shifts away. It is finished. The man will heal; _is_ healed, but he will sleep for a while. Castiel had made sure of that, when he bound his soul back into his body. The immediate aftermath of soul-grace contact in such circumstances was agonizing, for the soul. It was best if he slept.

Castiel gets up, walks down to the river, and washes his hands, his face. He looks down curiously. His body is spattered with blood. No. His vessel’s body; his vessel’s clothes. He looks back at the sleeping man, frowning. Then he reaches deep, approaches the tattered soul that sleeps curled in the core of his grace. It shifts, sensing his presence but unable to wake. He soothes it, presses it back into its deep, dreamless sleep. There is very little of Jimmy Novak left in that soul; the man from Pontiac, Illinois. The man with the wife named Amelia and the daughter named Claire. The man who had lived his simple human life, living in devotion to his understanding of his God. Until Castiel had come.

Castiel had come, and for the first time in uncounted millennia, he had needed a vessel. And Jimmy was the one. He had done everything in the correct way, even as other angels scoffed at him. “Just grab him up,” a brother advised. “Tell him whatever you need to get the yes. He’s only human, after all.” Castiel feels a twinge of pain at that. Uriel. He still misses him, now. But he hadn’t taken Uriel’s advice; something in him pulled back at the words _only human_. Because he had, for the first time in his existence, touched a human soul.

He remembers that soul, the soul of the Righteous Man, and how it had fought him in Hell— _I stay I stay_ \--how it had named itself Evil, named itself Pain and Hurt and Sin. For the first time in all the eons of his existence, Castiel had reacted with emotion, on impulse. He had wrapped his grace around the soul, sheltering it in the very core of his being, as they fled from Hell. He had been the first to touch Dean’s soul, and it had been up to him to knit the body back together, to renew the flesh, to bind the soul back into its bodily home. It had not wanted to let go, he remembered. He had unraveled his grace from the soul, exposing the very heart of himself, and the soul had clung to him. He had burned with the effort of untangling soul from grace, marking the body of the man he had saved.

He had been lost then, though he had not known it. His sister called him _lost_ , and she meant _corrupted._ Sometimes he _feels_ corrupted, tainted; as if some part of him has rotted and sloughed away, and he is no longer sure what remains. More, he thinks, his old self—the self that had barely considered itself more than a conscious force of duty and service—was lost. That was the moment, with Dean’s soul entwined in his grace, that he began to become a new being. An imperfect, hurting being, but new. There had been no precedence for it among angels; if you felt you fell, and you had to fall to feel. Yet he felt. He felt, and he chose, and he rebelled, and he fell but was not fallen.

Love can be a horrible and terrifying thing. We will do anything to protect those we love. We will do horrible and terrifying things to keep them safe.

Castiel considers this, splashing his hands in the river, cleaning his hands, his face. His clothes he leaves. They are tattered, torn, already spattered with the blood of monsters, of Leviathan. He could cleanse them in an instant, but he leaves them. There is no reason to repair them. He finishes, and rises, looking around the area. It is quiet. The monsters will not be a serious threat—though he notices all the blades have been lost; the man has no way to defend himself. The only true threat is Leviathan, and he hopes they will be able to stay ahead of them until…until what?

Until Metatron comes for them.

He looks down at the sleeping man. He had been torn out of his own world, brought here. To Purgatory. To Castiel, he’s certain. There could have been no clearer message. _This is your charge, protect him._ And he’d tried. Tried to usher them out, to ensure that they would all escape. He’d made it explicit _: If there is a risk to Dean, I stay._ Yet this man had not accepted it, had reached out to him—and here they both were. He allows himself a moment’s annoyance. If the man had not reached out to grab him--! He would still be here, of course, and perhaps he would finally allow himself to be caught by Leviathan, allow himself to die. He could only pray that whatever force it was that continually revived him did not reach into Purgatory.

He doesn’t have much hope for that.

There’s a sudden stirring at his feet. He steps back as the man rolls over onto his knees and coughs, retching. He leans on his hands, and the right collapses under him, sending him sprawling. He groans.

“I didn’t expect you to wake so quickly. I had thought you’d sleep till the effects wore off.”

 “I don’t feel…”

“I touched your soul. There will be some aftereffects for a while. No permanent damage.”

Ben straightens up, stares at him in shock. “My soul?”

“I apologize, but it was the only way to—it was necessary to the healing process.” Castiel decides the details aren’t necessary; perhaps better that the man not know how close he came to dying, how his soul had tried to flee his torn and flayed body. “I wouldn’t otherwise take such intimacies without permission.

“No, no that’s not it, I just,” he shakes his head “it suddenly hit me that I have a soul.”

“We did talk about that before.”

Ben looks at him. “There’s something far more real about someone telling you they touched your soul than discussing the physics of angel possession.”

He seems to think of something. “It’s an intimacy?”

Castiel is embarrassed, reluctant. “Under most circumstances, to have your soul touched—especially by an angel’s grace—is excruciatingly painful. The human soul doesn’t react well to such exposure.”

Ben nods, eyeing Castiel thoughtfully, as if thinking to ask him under what circumstances having your soul touched was _not_ painful. Castiel eyes him carefully, but Ben dismisses that track of thought for a more important one.

 “The portal closed, didn’t it?” He looks down at himself. “I thought I saw—“

He traces a line down his side. It doesn’t quite follow the healed gash, but it’s close. Castiel wonders how much he remembers.

“I healed you.”

Ben looks up at him, solemn for a moment. “Thank you. My hand—“

He shivers, Castiel can see it. “My hand was gone. I think—I couldn’t feel it. Just went numb. But I saw it. Last thing I saw. Door shut on it. You grew me a new one?” He waves his hand at Castiel.

“It is…rather more complex than that. But essentially yes.”

Ben lowers his hand and stares at it.

“It is identical in all ways to the hand you lost.” He doesn’t tell him it was transformed from the mud of Purgatory’s river. It seems best that he not know where it came from—although nothing can be created from nothing and surely he knows that.

Ben shakes his head. He touches the new hand with his left, as if learning it, trying to find where it was different than before. “No, it isn’t. I did things with that hand. A lot of things. Good things. You know, no innuendo. This hand—“ he waves it at Cas again, almost accusingly “—has never done anything.”

He sighs.

“But I’d rather have a hand, than not, so thanks for that.” Ben’s thoughtful. He looks around, then sinks down to the ground, hooking his elbows around his knees. “So what are we going to do now?”

Castiel doesn’t answer for a moment; he’s scanning the area. The Leviathan don’t seem to have followed them, but he’s still wary. They had shown up without warning at the portal; he’d had no sense of them until they were attacking. Then he looks back down at Ben.

“I told you I would stay behind if there was danger to Dean. My attempt to pass through the portal endangered all of you.” He looks away. “I had fulfilled my promise. You shouldn’t have tried to reach for me. You should have been sent home.”

“I didn’t think—“

“You nearly died. You were brought here—by Metatron, I assume—for a reason, most likely to be my charge. For you to die would be disastrous.”

“Yeah…it wouldn’t be so great for me either.”

Castiel sighs, shakes his head. “As to what we do now, I don’t know. It is highly unlikely that there is another way out of Purgatory. But if Metatron can bring you here, most likely he will return for you when he has need. Perhaps that will get you out.”

Ben looks up at him. “Are you saying I should say _yes_ in order to get out? We’ve already established that will kill me, yeah?”

“I didn’t mean that you should agree to be Metatron’s vessel. I meant that in time Metatron will come to pull you out. He most likely will not demand consent first.”

“Most likely.” Ben muttered. “And you?”

Castiel hesitates. “It would seem that I will have to stay here. It _is_ the right thing after all.”

“All we did…” Ben shakes his head. “We wanted to make things better. I wanted to make things better. Change them, make sure things didn’t –didn’t happen the way they did back home. Lot of good it’s done.”

He closes his eyes. “Cas, are you staying here because you believe you have to be punished?”

Castiel doesn’t answer. It’s not the right question, really. He doesn’t believe he needs to be punished; he _knows_ it. Everything that had happened in Heaven and on Earth, the things he had done—they’re all crowded around him, pressing in on him. There’s no escape here.

“It’s a moot point. The portal’s closed—which is surprising because you are, after all, human—and there is no other way out of Purgatory.”

“Says a lot about your attitude though. If I wasn’t here,” Ben continues, and now he doesn’t look at Castiel but down at his new hand, “if it was only you…Were you going to give yourself to Leviathan?”

Castiel stares at him. Yes, that was what he had thought, when he had felt the portal closing against him. That had, indeed, been his plan from the time Dean and Benny had found him and informed him of the portal. To usher Dean safely to the portal and see him home, then stay behind. Stop running. Stop fighting. Let what had to happen, happen. Then he had promised Ben, and…No matter. It had still ended up the same way. He had charge of this man, of Metatron’s vessel, and so he would watch over him until the force that had brought him here plucked him out of Purgatory. Then, yes, at last, he would give himself to Leviathan for atonement.

Ben eyes him, as if following the thought process.

“Yes. You were. Damnit Cas, I thought…” He shakes his head. His right hand forms itself into a fist, slams into his knee with a _whap._ “I told you, that’s not…killing yourself will do no good. For anybody. Maybe you can’t get back, maybe you can’t fix everything, but this isn’t how you—“

“I know more about atonement and payment for sin than you. I know the price of what I’ve done, and that price is death. I should be struck down by an angel, but since that’s not an option here, I’ll settle for Leviathan. It would be appropriate.”

Ben glares up at him, but doesn’t respond. “And what about Dean?”

The shift in topic throws Castiel for a moment. “Dean is fine. He’s out of Purgatory, and while I’m still not certain about the vampire—“

“Benny. His name’s Benny.” Ben sighs. “And he really is a good person, Cas, vampire or not. Wasn’t talking about Dean being _safe._ I mean, what do you think it’ll do to him, you let yourself get killed here?”

Castiel shakes his head. “He wouldn’t know. And Dean…Dean must understand that I have to—“

“He’d know. Shit, Cas, he suspected all the way here. Didn’t you see the way he was watching you?”

“I…” He’d seen some looks from Dean, but he’d dismissed them as the careful look of someone who’s not sure the person they’re with is completely together, completely trustworthy. A holdover from the Castiel he’d been before they’d been blasted into this place.

“You two.” Ben sighs, shakes his head. He looks thoughtfully up at Castiel, as if wanting to say more, then seems to reconsider. He turns away instead, rolling over to his knees, then shifting to his feet unsteadily. He looks at the running water of the river, burbling over stones at the edge.

“Cas, is the water safe?”

“I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “I would think so. I do not think that any element of this place is intended to cause harm, but it was not meant for humans.”

Ben stares. “I’m thirsty.”

“You lost a lot of blood. I can heal, and encourage rapid replacement of blood cells, and rehydrate you. But there is still a mental element.”

“So I just think I’m thirsty.” He kneels down, cups his hands in the water. “Good enough for me.”

Castiel looks around as he drinks. There’s nowhere for them to go, nowhere they need to be. The only priority now is keeping the man safe. Staying here—where, for now at least, it is quiet and tranquil—would be best. He has no sense of what might happen, what should happen. It’s a disorienting feeling. He’d thought that the vessel being brought here meant Metatron’s arrival was imminent, but as time passes with no sign he begins to wonder. Perhaps Metatron was counting on his vessel escaping through the portal. Castiel is certain Metatron knows of the portal, knows of every element of Purgatory. He was created after it, but unlike other angels he had been charged with recording its creation. Castiel turns, walks back under the trees. It’s settled for him. They’ll stay here and wait. The man might not like it, but Castiel knows there is no better option.

Ben finishes drinking, stands up. He notices Castiel is gone, looks around without apparent alarm. Seeing him, he nods, but doesn’t move. He looks back over the water, seems to consider something.

“There’s another way out of here, you know.” Castiel doesn’t reply. Ben glances over at him, and Castiel shakes his head. Another way out…it would be no better than the first. It would reject him just as the portal rejected him. “And I think you’re the perfect person for it.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“ _Hell_ , Cas. There’s a portal to Hell somewhere around here. You’re an angel. You can lead someone through—out of--Hell. We both know you’ve done it before. We find the portal; you lead us through back into the world.”

“It’s _Hell._ ” The man seems to have no concept of what he is suggesting; it’s as if he views it as a simple path, just walk through hell and out. Sure it’s a bad neighborhood, but you just keep going, and you’ll be fine. “I won’t lead someone into Hell. I _am_ still an angel.”

“You know what’s waiting for you if we don’t try it?”

He frowns at Ben. “’Waiting for me’? There is nothing waiting for me.”

“Yes. Do you know an angel named Naomi?”

Castiel shakes his head.

“She’s going to send an army after you. Pull you out of here; I don’t know what will happen to me, because that wasn’t…wasn’t in the story. And she’s going to hold you hostage—sort of. Brainwash you and try to make you Heaven’s good soldier again. She’s desperate, Cas. You devastated Heaven and she’s doing everything she can to put it back together. But it’s dangerous to you.”

He hesitates. “To Dean. And I’d rather try the road through Hell. I don’t—I don’t think I’d fare very well against an army of angels.”

Cas looks around. “Do you know when they would be coming?”

“No. We didn’t…didn’t get that detailed. Just a while after you…after you stayed behind.”

“I don’t know. I’m not in any condition to resist an angelic army, and you of course would be obliterated in an instant. They might protect you as Metatron’s vessel, but...There was likely a reason Metatron did not pull you directly into the living world, but into Purgatory. We could try the Hell path, but…Where is the portal? What does it look like?”

Ben runs a hand through his hair, looking embarrassed. “I don’t know. We hadn’t gotten that far…just discussed it. I’m guessing because everything else we’ve done is reflected here—or we’re reflecting what’s here—that it exists.”

“But you don’t know what it looks like.”

Ben hesitates. “I know what it looks like in my mind. But—“

“It’s what we’ll have to go on.” Castiel shakes his head. “I don’t think this is a good idea. And it is unlikely we’ll be able to find such a portal; the vampire—“

“Benny.”

“—had information, obviously. So in your mind, what are we looking for?”

He closes his eyes for a moment, thinking. “It isn’t supposed to be visible—no one’s supposed to be able to open it from this side. But once you know where it is, what to look for, you can see it. Trees grown together in an arch. There’s trees all around; no water. It’s away from the river. There’s, there’s a hill behind; the ground swells up to meet the archway.”

Castiel looks around. The ground on this side of the river slopes down ever so slightly; there’s a rise on the other side. That’s as good a direction as any, then. He still thinks staying here would be best, but it is possible that Metatron also knows about the portal through Hell. Perhaps he is counting on them using that. He grabs Ben’s arm, indicates the other side of the river. With a crack of wings, they are there.

They walk in silence, moving through the trees quickly. They seek out higher ground, unspeaking. It’s not much to go on; very little in fact, but it’s all they have. A hill. High ground. Away from the water. They quickly fall into a rhythm, Castiel’s steps matching those of the taller man.

He remembers what the man had said. _You two…_ He had thought his bond with Dean irrevocably broken.The last fight with Leviathan had simply been a way to repair whatever remained, to atone in whatever last ways he could. That sounds like forgiveness, he’d said to Dean, and Dean had responded I guess so. But he hadn’t really thought there could be forgiveness, not truly. They would never be able to go back.And then Purgatory had happened, and he had run to keep Dean safe, believing he would not see him again—and oh, how that had hurt!

But Dean had come looking for him, had found him on the banks of that river. He had come to him, and embraced him, and Cas had not known what to do, how to respond. Dean had never done that, never hugged him like that, and for a moment he had thought back to pulling him from Hell, Dean’s soul entwined in his grace, and there had been sadness. Dean had held him fiercely, if briefly, and Castiel had felt Dean’s soul pulled towards his grace. _I found you_ , it seemed to say. _This time, let me save you._ And he had gone with it, not because of any of Dean’s arguments or pleas, but because of the call of that soul. _Let me save you._ He had known then.

He’s pulled out of his thoughts when Ben speaks.

“Cas?”

“Yes.”

“Back when I first met you…I could see your, some element I suppose, of your true form. And your voice was…I think I was hearing it too.”

Castiel nods, not looking at him. “Yes. Some people—some vessels possess the ability to withstand and understand our true voices. Jimmy,” he gestures at himself, “was one of them. I expected Dean to be, as well, but he was not.”

“And the true form…”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. It is highly unusual. There are very few for whom it has happened, but it isn’t unprecedented. And it was not fully my true form that you were seeing, but an echo, a reflection. Part of the extrusion into this dimension of my full being.”

Next to him, Ben shivers. “It must be difficult.”

“For me? It _is_ what I am.”

“No, for everyone else.” He sighs. “You look, you look like a man. Just an ordinary human being. I think even when we know, people must forget that we’re not seeing what you really are. It’s hard for me to remember. I can’t even really recall what you looked like when I saw that, that reflection of you. My mind seems to want to slip around it. I know you can do things, but my mind wants to see them as just…super powered human gifts.”

“One of the purposes of envesselment is that very thing. It’s to allow us to blend in, to interact with human beings as ordinary. To seem as if we are on the same level.”

“But you’re not!” Ben waves his arms, seemingly frustrated. “You aren’t human, and when you present yourselves as if you are it’s, it’s difficult! Cas…”

He’s silent for a moment, as if gathering his thoughts. “Cas, the way I knew you before…the fictional you, I mean, the you that’s a character in my world…I’ve always thought I kept a good grasp on the idea that you were an angel. That I wasn’t writing you the same as I might write a human being; that I was always keeping the angel at the forefront. You were a person but so much more too. And now, here, the real you…you’re different.”

“I’m who I’ve always been.” Against his better judgment, Castiel is amused.

“Yeah, but that’s different from what I’ve known. _You’re_ different. You’re real. _More_ than real. And that’s—it’s—“ he waves his hand in an incomprehensible gesture. “I feel like I don’t know you at all—and that’s right, I suppose, because I don’t. But before I came here, I thought I knew you so well. And you’re like a stranger that I mistakenly thought I knew, you understand?”

“No.”

“It’s fine. It’s just…I don’t know. You aren’t what I expected.”

Castiel thinks for a bit. “I’m not what I expected either. Not anymore.”

“Fair enough.”

Time wears on. It’s very quiet, peaceful and tranquil. There’s no sign of pursuit—either by monsters or by Leviathan—but there’s also no sign of any trees grown together, or any archway. All the trees are the same, thick poles that grow straight upward, vanishing into the dull sky. Castiel is beginning to think they should try another direction—Purgatory is a finite space, but they should probably try to cover new ground. He starts to tell Ben this when there is a flash of light and a roar on the horizon.

“Cas?” It’s not a question, not quite; Ben is aware of what this is. Castiel watches the angelic flood and is alarmed. This is not a haphazard rescue mission. It is organized and in a force far beyond he would have thought Heaven capable of now. He would have been shocked, had he not been warned, and even now he is alarmed. Something is happening in Heaven; something he has no precedent for. But this has been a time of new things for Heaven, and this is yet another of them. But now, here, they have to run. If there was a question before as to what they should do—Castiel had thought perhaps the best would be to turn himself over, gain a promise that the vessel would be returned safely into the living world—there is none now. This is not a mission of mercy. The angels are unvesseled, all hot and burning grace. Whatever gifts Ben had in being able to view the trueform, he would not be able to withstand such an onslaught.

“We have to run. Now.” There’s no time to question whether they are headed in the right direction; there is nothing but to run away from the advancing force. He knows he’s shining like a beacon, drawing the angels to them. He’s tempted to rush, but such movement would only bring their attention down on them harder. And he would not be able to outrun them, anyway. They run, and Castiel can only hope that the portal to Hell is real, and that they are headed for it. He knows they will be caught soon if they do not find it.

“Don’t look back at them. Shield your eyes.” He can hear them now, too, the vibration of color and hum and texture that was the angels’ voices. They are looking for him, calling to him. _Castiel, brother, come to us. Come home. There is work for you._ He shakes his head.

They run, but no human body can move faster than an angel unvesseled, pure grace and energy flowing through Purgatory. He looks back, and sees a roiling maelstrom in the sky, trees bent and torn by the force of it, as Purgatory tries to vomit the host out. The force is hindered by Leviathan, enraged at this invasion. Castiel hears the shriek and thunder of grace torn and mutilated, of angel deaths. More death to add to his toll—if he had not been here they would not have died. It does not matter that he is running from them, that he does not know them. They are his sisters, his brothers, and he has killed them.

Ben stumbles suddenly, and Castiel reaches back for him. He’s been feeling dull pain emanating from the man for a while, but ignored it—there was no time to do anything, and he could say no more to protect him than he already had. He looks back. It’s bad. His eyes are red, laced crimson and staring in his pale face. As Castiel watches, a trickle of blood drips from his nose. Ben grasps Castiel’s arm, pulling himself up. He swipes at his nose, stares dully at the blood. He coughs, and Castiel is not surprised to see a thin mist of blood shower his sleeve. There are humans who can withstand the true voice of a single angel. There are even a few who can withstand the cacophony of the angelic army. But no human can withstand the dying cries of mortally wounded angels.

“I can hear them screaming.” Ben looks up at him blearily. “It hurts.”

There’s no time. He’s going to die if Castiel doesn’t get him away, move them as far as he can from the advance. He doesn’t know where to go—Purgatory is a bounded space, and he thinks they must be heard in every corner. But if they can only get far enough away, they’ll be a bit safer. Not safe. But safer. There is risk in flight, but there are no more options. He grasps Ben’s arm, and rushes them forward, a flash of movement, and they are deep in the woods, standing in a small clearing. The hill still rises before them.

There is someone standing in the trees ahead of them. He can see it, but he cannot sense it; he reaches out with his grace; he can still see it but finds no resistance, no responding vibration of another consciousness. There is someone standing there, but there is no one there. And after a moment, he sees that it is not one person, but many; the woods are full of them and they are all as insubstantial and nonexistent as the first.

“Cas…” Ben’s voice is a hoarse whisper. “Why are they here? How did they get here?”

“They aren’t there.” He looks Ben over quickly. He’s not seriously wounded; he will heal on his own in time.

“Then what—“

“We must be near the portal to Hell.” It’s the only explanation; he’s annoyed that he had not thought of this, not considered it earlier. “They are not truly here, they are manifestations of guilt. A projection of Hell. What do you see?”

Ben doesn’t answer. He looks ahead, into the darkness of the woods, then over at Castiel, mute. His face is strained, his jaw tight.

“Do you see the dead? _Your_ dead?”

Ben nods at that, not looking away from Castiel.

The dead have come to greet them. Except it isn’t the dead, not really, but a projection out of Hell; the embodiment of every lost opportunity, every cruel word, every failed embrace. And for Castiel, every betrayal, every battle, every angel blade to the core of grace. He sees a crowd of angels, every one of whom had died at his hand. They stare at him accusingly, imploringly. We trusted you, and look what you became. That they are not truly here, that no angel would be here, is no relief. There is no afterlife for angels. Angelic death is permanent, absolute; the energy is returned into the universe, all consciousness lost. This makes this gathering of the dead all the more painful. Accusing ghosts would be better than looking upon all his brothers and sisters and being reminded that they were irrevocably gone, destroyed by his own hand. Hell is efficient, and Hell is cruel.

“Do we…keep going?”

“They cannot harm us.”

The two of them walk forward slowly, into the dead.

“Keep your eyes on the ground. Whatever they say, do not listen to them. Remember they aren’t truly the souls of your dead. They will lie, but there will be enough truth in the lies to hurt. Hell wants you to hurt. It is _made_ to hurt.”

Ben keeps his head down, and he doesn’t answer, but Castiel sees him nod slightly. He feels a tug at his side, and turns to see Rachel. Her grace shimmers red and there is a black void at its center, where once it would have burned and pulsed white hot.

“Look what you did to us, Castiel.” She points to the emptiness at her core. “We trusted you, and look what you did to us.”

_I’m sorry_ , he wants to say. _I’m sorry, I wanted to do the right thing, all I wanted was to do what was right._ But he minds his advice to Ben, and he doesn’t answer. Rachel isn’t truly here, nor is Anna, nor Balthazar, nor Hester, nor any of the rest. To seek absolution from these hallucinations would be empty madness.

“I was your friend, Cassie.” Balthazar now, his grace with the same gaping void as Rachel. “I stood for you in Heaven. I wanted to protect you. I was _always_ your friend. And what were you to me, in the end?”

Balthazar expands himself, and for a moment Castiel sees him in his vessel, his final vessel, angel blade buried in his chest, bleeding red blood and the light of grace. “You were my butcher.”

He wants to close his eyes, shut them out, except of course he isn’t seeing them with his vessel’s eyes. It’s his grace that they are impressing themselves upon, and he cannot close himself off to their accusations. It is a long, slow walk to the heart of this army of ghosts. He can hear Ben breathing beside him, deep careful breaths. He thinks the man is trying not to cry; trying to sound as if he isn’t trying not to cry. He wonders what he sees, what he is hearing.

And finally, they are through, and they stand at the center of their accusers. Directly ahead of them, Castiel sees two trees grown together in an arch. There is a shimmering space between them, and as he focuses on it he sees the gate, the opening to Hell. It is closed now, but he feels the howl within, struggling to escape. He reaches out with his grace to test the door. It responds violently to his touch. It _wants_ to be opened, and he is certain this means he should not open it. But they have no choice, no real choice.

The darkness shimmers, and there is a man standing in the center of the portal now. Dean is covered in blood and grime, and he stares at Castiel in silent condemnation. It is another projection of Hell, it must be, and yet he looks real and solid. _Not real_ , Castiel tells himself. _Not real. Not here. He’s safe. Dean Winchester is safe._

“The portal didn’t work, Cas.” Not-Dean tells him, and his voice is harsh and rough and gurgling. Blood spills over his lips, runs down to drip from his chin. He grins, and his teeth are jagged and broken. “When that door slammed shut to keep you out, it slammed shut on all of us. No one made it through. It’s your fault. Not surprised, though. All you have ever done is hurt and destroy. That’s all you’re good for. No wonder the world didn’t want you back. It spit you right back into this cage. But you’re alive and I’m dead. It’s never you, is it Cas? It’s always someone else who pays the price.”

“No!” Castiel forgets himself, forgets that Dean cannot be here, no matter his fate. This is Hell’s cruelest vision for him, the guardian of its gate. _Come in, there’s more of this waiting inside_ , it’s meant to tell him. _We’ve got a Dean around every corner, every one more mutilated and hateful than the last, because we know exactly how to hurt you. Because you_ can _be hurt now, Castiel. You aren’t the blind servant of duty you once were, when you and your army blasted through here and snatched up the soul of the Righteous Man. Because we saw how that soul melded with your grace. And now you are something that isn’t human but is oh so very different than what you were. You can be hurt, Castiel, Angel of the Lord, Heart of the Righteous Man. And oh we will hurt you._

“We have to go on.” He says it as much to himself as to Ben, trying to drown out the voice of the Not-Dean. He turns to Ben, and sees guilt and grief etched onto his face. He doesn’t ask what he sees in the archway of the portal. “There…there will be more of this. And worse. Passage through Hell is not a light undertaking. Every weakness, every regret—everything you have ever felt guilt over—those will all be shown to you. And every good thing, every bliss and every joy, will be twisted into madness and darkness. Hell will make you feel as if your life, your soul, is nothing. Worse than nothing. It will make you want to stay, because it will make you believe that it is where you deserve to be. Do you understand?”

Ben shakes his head. “No. I don’t think…don’t think I _can_ understand. This is hard enough, here. All I do know is that we have to go on, don’t we?”

“Yes.” Castiel turns his attention back to the portal. Not-Dean grows insubstantial, silent.

“Cas, do you think they’re actually dead?” Ben’s voice is low. “He said I killed him. Because I reached for you. I saw him. He was…he was flayed. Pulled open. I could see…I could see inside of him.”

“No. You saw what Hell wanted you to see, what Hell wanted both of us to see.”

“Thank you.” It’s barely a whisper, and Castiel nods curtly in response. He turns all of his attention back to the portal, pushing on it with his grace, twisting it. It begins to iris open, and the howl within grows to a shriek. They are pummeled by an icy wind. Both of them gasp, and the air chills his vessel’s throat and settles as a cold weight in his lungs. Hell is cold. Hell is the absence of every warmth, every brightness, every hope. And they are walking into it.

He looks at Ben, and Ben looks back at him. They gaze at each other for a long moment. Then they are stepping forward into the portal, out of Purgatory, into the frozen darkness of Hell.

They do not look back.


	6. Reunion (Jeremy)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean, Jeremy, and Benny are out of Purgatory; Dean and Jeremy meet up with Sam and Kevin. They decide whether to go after the demon tablet or try to send Jeremy home.

The road has not been paved in years, and the truck they’ve hitched a ride in bounces and jounces over the crumbling pavement surrounding the potholes that make up most of its surface. He’s jarred awake by one particularly vicious thump, his head smacking painfully against the cab’s roof. He looks over at Dean, starring stony-faced out of the passenger window. _It’s still true_ , he thinks.

 He shifts a bit uncomfortably. There’s not much room. It’s a tight fit, and he’s closer to both the driver and Dean than he’d like, but they hadn’t had many options. They’d hiked a long way already; no one had wanted to pick them up. He guesses he can understand why. Neither of them had washed properly. After…after they’d landed here, Dean had stumbled on—or been smart enough to hear and figure out how to find—some campers and had commandeered some of their clothing. They’d found a creek to wash in the woods, and had cleaned off the grime of Purgatory and the blood of…of things he still can’t think about. Dean’s clothes had been fine, but Jeremy’s had been blood-spattered.

No matter what you do to a bloodstain, it always looks like blood.

So he’d tried the camper’s clothes, feeling guilty, but desperately wanting the blood off of him, away from him. They’d fit better than he might have expected; the camper was a bit shorter and a bit heavier than him, so it wasn’t a perfect fit. But it worked. Then Dean had told him that they had to bury the hand, and he had protested. He’d thought of reattachment, hospitals, and he’d told Dean they needed to find ice, keep it on ice. He’d known, even as he spoke, that he wasn’t being rational, wasn’t making sense. But Dean had been calm, patiently explaining that there was no body for the hand to be reattached to, and it wasn’t likely that one would be showing up in time to make that a legitimate possibility. Dean had wanted to burn the orphan hand; Jeremy had convinced him to bury it.

“Do you think he’s dead?” he’d asked Dean over the tiny grave—possibly the only grave the man would have. Dean had shaken his head.

“If he survived the portal closing, Cas was with him. Cas can heal him.”

Jeremy had stared at the disturbed ground. They’d buried it deep; found a couple of rocks to discourage scavengers. _Meat on the bone,_ he thought. _Used to be a hand. Now it’s just food for something._

“He was—is—an artist. How’s he gonna draw with no hand?” Stupid, stupid, and he had known it, trying to grasp on to some semblance of normality, mind latching on to the hand to avoid remembering that the man it belonged to was probably dead.

“Maybe Cas can fix that. I don’t know.”

“If he’s alive.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think he’s alive?” Clinging onto some hope, any hope.

Dean turns to look at him. “No. And you better hope he’s not. Because where he is now? He’s not getting out.”

And so they’d left, Dean grumbling about Benny all the way. They’d hiked out of the wilderness and to a road, and from there they’d hitched rides down to Louisiana, to Benny’s bones. Sometimes they walked, still; sometimes rides were hard to come by. But they’d gotten there, and he’d stood by and watched as Dean opened Benny’s grave and reversed the ritual. Benny had hugged Dean, called him brother, sworn to stay out of trouble. But he had come to Jeremy and said,

“How are you? You still got that hunger?”

And Jeremy had shifted uncomfortably, looking over to Dean who was watching them closely. It was still there, the hunger, though more diffuse and less directed. On the way down, when he’d slept he’d dreamt of eating meat, rare meat, hamburgers and steak and more, nearly raw and bloody. It disturbed him, but the hunger at least wasn’t directed at people. And maybe, in fact, he was just hungry. Normal hunger. He hadn’t needed to eat while they were in Purgatory; maybe this was just all that repressed hunger rushing in. But he didn’t tell Benny that, not with Dean watching.

“Yeah…I mean, no. I’m all right now.”

If Benny figured it for a lie, he didn’t let on. He offered a hand, and they shook. Benny’s hand was cool to the touch. “You watch yourself.”

With another nod to Dean, he’d walked away, and that had been that. Dean had told him—though he’d already known, of course—that he wanted to go up to Rufus’ cabin. Call Sam, have him meet them there. They’d figure out where to go from there. So they’d reversed their journey, hitching again, walking when they could. Sometimes they got dropped off in towns, and he’d waited outside restaurants until Dean walked out with burgers and fries. He didn’t ask how. Dean never seemed worried, just handed him his meal and devoured his own. The meat is good, but it’s always too cooked, flavorless. It needs blood. He says nothing about this to Dean.

Now here they are, on the last stretch of a long road. He’s tired, bone tired; they haven’t really gotten rest since getting here. And he hadn’t really rested there, either. And since they’ve been here, it’s just been fitful naps as their driver of the moment hauled them further along to their goal. At the cabin, at least, he’ll be able to rest. Get a real meal. And sleep. And sleep. He hopes Dean’s plans include a lot of sleep. Some part of him fears his sleep will be invaded by nightmares, but at this point he no longer cares. He’s tired and he hurts and he wants to sleep.

Dean tells the driver to drop them off at the head of the road that leads to the cabin. It’s late night, and the gibbous moon glares down at them from the sky as they start the long hike.

“It’s about six miles,” Dean tells him. “Should be there by morning.”

“What are you going to do?” He knows, of course. But he doesn’t know how he fits in, how this is going to play out.

“Sam might be there. No telling where he’s set up home base, but could be here. If he’s not, I’m callin’ him. Tell him to get his ass up here. Once we got everything figured out here, then we’ll figure out how to get you home.”

“What about Ben? And Cas?” Something would be coming for Cas, before too long, but he doesn’t think it would be good for Ben—if Ben is still alive.

“We can’t do anything about them.” Even in the dark Jeremy can see the grim set of Dean’s mouth, the gleam of his eyes. “That’s over. Done. We can’t reopen Purgatory, too damn dangerous.”

“Dean—“

“No. Look, I’m sorry about your friend. Colleague. Whatever. He seemed like a good guy. But even if they’re still alive in there, we got no way of getting to them. So we just gotta…we gotta realize they’re gone.”

He stalks ahead of Jeremy, boots kicking the dirt of the road with rather more force than necessary. Jeremy doesn’t pursue it. Maybe when the incursion of angels comes, they’ll bring Ben too. Maybe he’ll be all right. When he imagined it, he saw it as an army of angels without vessels, such that no human eye would be able to look at them. But maybe it will be different. Maybe…He shakes his head. _Dean is right,_ he thinks. _For now, at least, there’s nothing I can do. I know more than him for now; I know Naomi’s army is coming for them._

He isn’t sure if he should tell Dean about Naomi. In the immediate, it might reassure him that he had not failed, that Cas would be all right and would be coming home soon enough. On the other hand…it would give him good reason not to trust Cas. _But he’s already not going to trust him,_ he remembers. _From the time Cas shows up and says he doesn’t know how he got out of Purgatory, he’s going to be suspicious. He knows now that being here, just knowing what’s going to happen, isn’t enough to change the future._ Events would play out as they would, and maybe they— _I,_ he reminds himself _, it’s just me now_ —could make a difference, but maybe they can’t. Maybe they never could. They’d tried to get Cas out of Purgatory; Ben had talked to him, convinced him not to try to stay behind. That had worked, but then something else had stepped in to prevent Cas from escaping through the portal with the rest of them.

With this in his mind, Jeremy is occupied the rest of the way to the cabin. Dean doesn’t speak to him; he appears to be still angry, still lost in his attempt to convince himself that Cas was gone. He knows that it’s guilt Dean feels the most; he tried to get Cas out and failed, and along with that, suffered the loss of someone he was protecting. This Dean, the real Dean, is not quite the fictional character he’s known, but they are close enough that he knows this Dean will blame himself for it all, even down to the portal that slammed shut to keep the angel in, even down to things he could not possibly have known, could not possibly have prevented.

They can see the first glimmerings of dawn in the sky when they reach the cabin. Birds alternately chirp and screech— _probably different species_ , he thinks, though he couldn’t name them—and he wonders at what a difference even that sound makes. In Purgatory there had been no birdsong, no anything. It had been almost completely silent. Strange how quickly you got used to the silence, started to think it normal. The normal sounds of the world now—even this quiet morning—are a deafening cacophony.

“Sam’s not here.” It’s the first time Dean’s spoken in hours.

He’s right. The cabin is dark and silent, closed up. It doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in months, at least. If Jeremy guessed, he’d say that no one had been there in, oh, about a year. The last time both brothers had been there. Just before they’d gone after Dick Roman. They’d all been there, he remembers. Dean and Sam, Castiel, Meg. Bobby too, in a form, for a while. Even Crowley’d been called in.

Crowley.

Jeremy stops, eyeing the cabin. Crowley had been called here; he knew where the cabin was. Would he be coming after them? He knows he didn’t, before, but maybe things have changed. Maybe he knows. Then he remembers the other tablets, all the grand drama that is about to unfold—might be about to unfold. He debates again just what he should tell Dean; he entertains a brief fantasy of simply telling Kevin, wherever he might be and whenever he might show up, what is on the demon tablet. Ben had thought they shouldn’t play too openly with their future-telling capabilities, since they didn’t know exactly what might actually happen in this world versus what was just working as a better story in theirs. In fact, they didn’t even know how their two worlds connected, why they were telling stories in theirs that were reality here. He supposes he should just be grateful that their world had apparently been running a bit ahead of this one.

Dean doesn’t seem concerned about any threats from the demon king of hell, and he quickly has the door opened. It’s dark inside, with a musty smell. Jeremy’s sure he’s right about it not being opened for a year.

“Sam’s in Texas.” He says it without thinking, dropping himself down onto the couch.

Dean glares at him.

“You couldn’t have mentioned that before? How’d you know he’d be in Texas now anyway? Could be somewhere else by now, or not there yet—“

He debates for a bare second. Well, Dean’s going to find out soon enough when Sam gets here. Might as well give him a little forewarning. “He’s been living there. For a while.”

Dean stares at him as if he’d suggested Sam had decided to take a turn on the rodeo circuit. “ _Living_ there? Not hunting?”

He avoids Dean’s gaze. Telling him where Sam was living was tantamount to telling him Sam hadn’t looked for him, but he’s going to find out soon enough. Better, maybe, for it to come from him than from Sam. By the time Sam got here maybe Dean would be able to listen, to be less angry, to—

There’s a crash. He looks up to see Dean has smashed his fist into a wall. It’s the arm that held Benny, and now the wound is torn open and begins to bleed. Dean swears under his breath, disappears to the back of the cabin—bathroom, Jeremy assumes, and sure enough Dean reappears with gauze, pulling up his already sodden sleeve and wrapping it around the wound.

“Did he look for me? At all?”

“I—I don’t—“

“ _Did he look for me?_ ”

“No. Not in our—not as we set it out.” At Dean’s look, he hastily adds, “But that doesn’t mean that’s how it happened here. Not everything here has happened the way we wrote it. Look, I’m here, right?”

Dean is glaring at him, and he feels his own anger rise in response.

“Look, maybe he _didn’t_ hunt for you. Maybe in this world, he did. And maybe if he didn’t, he had good reason. Whatever it is, it’s not my doing and not my fault so leave it. I’m going to sleep.”

He lies down on the couch, curling slightly away from Dean—not for any real reason except to block the growing light in the cabin. He thinks vaguely that he should eat first; there’s a shower here, too, probably somewhere a change of clothes. But he’s asleep before he can decide which he should do first.

His dreams are strange and dark. He sees Cas carrying Ben, and his dream-eyes hurt watching them, watching dark shadows of wings, and he thinks he’s seeing Castiel’s quick movement. He sees Cas lay Ben down on the riverside, bend over him, sees wounds close up. He sees Cas form a new hand from mud, sees it transformed into bone and flesh before his eyes. Before he has time to wonder at it--he’s alive, Cas healed him and he’s alive—light and space move jerkily before him and he’s surrounded by a roar of light, flashes of shrieks and sound. It hurts, even in the dream, and he tries to turn away, to close his eyes. He finds himself looking at Ben. Ben’s eyes are red with blood; as he watches a crimson tear slips down his cheek. Blood runs from his nose, and when he opens his mouth Jeremy isn’t surprised to see blood smearing his teeth, bubbling up from his throat. _I can hear them, it hurts_ , Ben tells him, and he tries to say something, to reply, but he’s jerked away again. Then there is only darkness, absolute and complete and filled with an aching cold, a cold that was deep beyond ice, a cold that was the cold of the void, a cold that there were no words for. His consciousness jerks and flails, trying to awaken out of the dream. He senses a glimmer of light, a voice speaking, and he drags his mind up, out, towards it. As he reaches it, before he opens his eyes, he hears screaming. But it’s not Ben. It’s Cas.

He jerks awake. Dean’s standing across the room from him, in almost the same place he’d been when Jeremy had fallen asleep. But Dean hasn’t just been sleeping. He’s wearing new, cleaner, clothes. And he’s clean himself, hair still wet from the shower. He runs his hand through his hair now.

“I called Sam.”

Jeremy’s not sure he wants to know, but he asks anyway.

“Texas?”

Dean shakes his head. “Didn’t ask. Just told him to get his ass here. Didn’t wait to find out where he was coming from. So, could be soon, could be a while. Shouldn’t be more than a few days or so. No matter what he’s doing--” here his voice gets tight “—he’s gonna head right here.”

A few days. Jeremy reflects wryly on the way, in their show, everywhere seems to be just a short drive from anywhere else. It’s dramatic license, of course; the actual tedium and time of travel would be an unnecessary drag on the story. But here, things don’t happen immediately, framed in between act breaks. He shakes his head. Dean squints at him, puzzled, then shakes his own head in a dismissive gesture.

“You dream?”

“Yeah…” The dream is already slipping away. He remembers, vaguely, Cas healing Ben. Ben bleeding. Someplace dark and cold. They’re pictures in his mind, all jumbled up together so that he can’t remember which follows which. “I dreamed of Cas healing Ben.”

Dean snorts, but nods. “Good. Not a nightmare, then.”

He decides not to share the rest of his dream; and after all, maybe the healing did come last. “Yeah, I guess. You?”

“I don’t dream.” Dean’s curt. Topic dismissed. Jeremy eyes him thoughtfully, though. _Of course you do, and of course you remember them. You just don’t want anyone to know what you dream about. Because dreams are important, and what you dream about matters._ Aloud he says nothing.

They wait. The cabin’s stocked with food, canned and the kind you can simply keep on a shelf indefinitely, so it’s not great but it’s food. Jeremy washes and scrubs himself and then he showers again, only stopping when he realizes the grime he’s trying to wash off isn’t on his skin at all; it’s in his mind, his memory. In the end, it takes Sam only a little over a day to get there, and he’s not alone.

It’s midafternoon when they both hear the purring roar of a motor, and Jeremy knows—as if there was any question—from Dean’s face that it’s Baby. Sure enough, the car pulls up outside the cabin door. He goes to open it, but Dean pulls him back. He opens his jacket and pulls out a silver knife, followed by a bottle of what Jeremy suspects must be holy water. Jeremy grimaces. Dean notices and shrugs.

“Gotta be sure it’s him. Gotta make sure he knows it’s me.”

He doesn’t object then, but steps back out of the way. The door opens, Sam steps in, and then as far as Jeremy can tell it’s chaos. Dean splashes the water on himself, on Sam, then, apparently thoughtful, on Jeremy and—Kevin? He’s standing just behind Sam, eyes dark and serious, and he takes the water splashing with grace. He’s holding a plastic gun to his side. Dean hesitates for just a moment, and then raises the silver blade.

“Dean-“ Sam objects, but Dean pays him no mind, slicing his arm. Unexpectedly, he reaches out and grabs Jeremy, who has no time to resist before the knife is slicing his own skin open. Thankfully, Dean makes only a small nick, apparently enough to satisfy, then relents. Jeremy pulls back, nursing the wound and glaring at Dean. He’s angrier at the surprise than Dean’s action. _You could’ve warned me,_ he thinks, but Dean is already turning away, laying the knife on the table _. Did you even bother to clean the damn thing before slicing us up?_ Jeremy wonders bitterly. He’d never really thought about it before, but now that it was _his_ skin…how dirty _was_ that knife? Did it being silver make it better or worse? He doesn’t know. He tries to surreptitiously examine the knife, which has their blood smeared delicately at the tip, as Sam and Dean hug.

_Blood._

He realizes his mistake the second he touches the knife. He runs his finger along the side of the blade, scrapes the blood off, telling himself he’s cleaning it. But he knows it’s not true, who the hell cleans a knife blade with their finger. He stares down at his finger. There isn’t much blood—Dean had really barely nicked them both—and it’s already congealing, thick and sticky. It feels warm, and he feels both sickened and hungry. He looks over at them. Dean and Sam are involved with each other, but Kevin is staring at him with frank curiosity. He looks around the table, grabs up a rag, and wipes his finger, and, after a moment’s thought, the knife. That done, he glances back at Kevin, who is still staring at him, expression unchanged. He sets the knife back down carefully and swallows. The hunger is still there, but like Benny had told him— _you gotta keep control of it._ They still don’t know what this is; he doesn’t react to anything, and it’s something he can control. But they’d hoped it would stay in Purgatory, and instead it’s followed him out. To distract himself he turns his attention back to Sam and Dean.

“—Purgatory?” Sam throws a glance at Kevin.

“Yeah. Purgatory. The real deal.”

“So how’d you get out?”

“Apparently, it doesn’t like humans. Spits ‘em right out if you get to the right place.” Dean turns away, as if dreading the next question.

“Humans? So Cas—is he—he didn’t—“

“Cas didn’t make it.” Dean stares straight at Jeremy as he says it, his voice low and tight. “Portal wouldn’t let him through. He—he let go.”

He’s silent for a moment, then, before Sam can continue, he adds, “Someone else got left behind, too.”

He indicates Jeremy. Kevin nods at him; Sam frowns as if noticing him for the first time.

“Dean, what is he—“

“It’s complicated. He’s human. Name’s Jeremy. Maybe he can explain later, but he and his friend –colleague—got sucked into Purgatory with us, and—his friend got left behind. Badly hurt.”

“With Cas, so Cas can—“

Dean rolls his eyes towards Sam. “We don’t even know if Cas survived. Jeremy here says the guy was torn apart, the damn door cut his hand off—we have no idea what happened back there. He might’ve died before Cas could do anything. And if not—there were Leviathan swarming up the cliff to us right then, and there might not have been anything he could do. And if he did fix him up—for what? There’s no other way out. Dude’s better off dead.”

Jeremy closes his eyes, leans back against the table. He’s not sure which Dean to believe—the one who’d allowed him to hope on their hike the other morning, or this bitterly cynical one today. Better off dead. He wonders if he would feel the same, if he would hope that Ben was dead because that would be better than being left in Purgatory. He doesn’t, because he knows there’s something coming for Castiel at least, and hopefully Ben too. If he’s still alive. If his status as Metatron’s vessel means anything. The icy thought slashes through him that being the Vessel might not be a good thing for getting him out with the angelic invasion, even if it’s something he can withstand. He shoves it to the back of his mind. Nothing he can do about it now.

“—in Texas, so how long’s Kevin been with you?”

“About a day and a half.” Kevin answers, tone neutral but tightly wound. “You called just as I met up with him.”

“’Met up’?” Dean looks quizzically from Sam to Kevin and back.

“I tracked him down.” Kevin replies. Sam shakes his head at him, and Kevin gives him the steady stare in return. “I needed his help.”

“Wait a minute.” Dean swings around to Sam. “You didn’t even look for Kevin?”

Sam hesitates. “Dean…”

Dean just shakes his head in disgust and shrugs at Kevin. “So you got away from Crowley, huh?”

Kevin nods, apparently intent upon keeping the details of his escape to himself for the moment. He’s watching Jeremy, not talking. It’s unnerving.

“And you are…?” Jeremy jumps a little, startled at suddenly being addressed, and tries to disguise it by straightening up from where he’d been leaning against the table.

“Jeremy. Uh.” He looks at Dean, who gazes at him blankly, offering no advice. _Tell him where you’re from,_ his face says. _Or not. Whatever you choose. But if you don’t, I will._ “A—a friend, a colleague of mine and I were—we ended up in Purgatory, don’t know how and—“

Dean sighs. “They came from a different world.”

Kevin gasps and stares wide-eyed. Sam’s reaction is more subdued, but still interested. He looks at Jeremy, then over at Dean. “Is this a Balthazar thing?”

Dean shrugs. “Sort of, though I get that it’s not the same world. Alternate universe or some shit like that,” he explains in an aside to Kevin.

“So why is he—they—you…” Sam stops, shakes his head, and starts over. “Why did you and your friend end up here—or, in Purgatory?”

Jeremy starts to answer, realizes he doesn’t trust himself to talk. He gestures to Dean: _go on._

“The other guy—Ben—Cas said,” Dean pauses for a bare moment as he mentions Cas, “Cas said he was the vessel of Metatron. Thought that was why they got pulled in, that Metatron had some need of him.”

“Metatron…”

“Wrote the Dick rock.”

“Not just the Leviathan tablet now.” Kevin speaks up.

They all stare at him, except for Jeremy, who knows already what’s coming. The demon tablet. He looks over at Kevin. The long road to translation. The trials. And eventually, somewhere in there, an angel tablet. He supposes there will be time somewhere in there to find a way to send him home. There’s no reason for him to be here, after all. Maybe there was no reason for either of them to have been here, just some cosmic angelic joke. _There has to be a way out of this_ , he’d told himself all through Purgatory. And now, maybe there would be a way out of it for him, but he’d be going home alone. His hands tighten against the table’s edge until his knuckles whiten, until his nails dig painfully into the wood.

“There’s a demon tablet,” Kevin is saying. “Crowley had it—I don’t know where he found it. He wanted me to translate it. I was, and I found—There’s instructions there for closing the gates of Hell. Forever.”

Dean leans forward. “Did you tell Crowley?”

Kevin gives Dean a _do you think I’m stupid_ look, and shakes his head. “No. I lied, told him there was a recipe for a spell to bring more demons out of hell. So they brought them to me and—“

Sam laughs, clearly knowing the end of the story.

“—I made a bomb. A demon-killing bomb. The tablet had instructions on that, too. That’s how I got away from Crowley. And then I went looking for Sam, and…” He makes a here we are gesture.

“And the tablet? You didn’t leave it with Crowley?”

“Of course not.” Kevin glares at Dean. “It’s in a bus station locker in Laramie. It’s safer there. They’re looking for me; they don’t know I’ve ditched the tablet.”

“Smart kid.” Dean grins, and Kevin shrugs.

They all look at each other, weighing options. Jeremy carefully avoids anyone’s eyes, dreading the moment Dean realizes he can tell them what’s going to happen, what’s likely to happen. He could beg off by pointing out that his presence here might have changed things; after all, this wasn’t supposed to be part of the story arc, they weren’t supposed to be here, and Metatron was supposed to show up at the end of the story, someone else entirely. But some things are happening just as they had in the fictional world, despite their attempts to stop them. So maybe they’re—he’s—just getting dragged along for the ride, changing some parts of the story but not its essential drive.

“So, we’re gonna go get this tablet, right? Do—whatever it is we need to do to close the gates. And then,” Sam shrugs. “Find a way to send him home? I mean, we know the spell to send people between worlds, there’s probably a way to figure out how to send someone back to the right world.”

“Yeah. Yeah.” Dean looks over at Jeremy, who studiously avoids his gaze. “Sounds like a plan. You good with that? It’ll take us longer to get you home, but it might take us a while to figure that out anyway and I don’t want to leave this out there where Crowley can—“

“It’s fine. I’m fine.” He keeps his voice neutral. The longer he’s here, the more likely he’ll still be here when Cas ( _and Ben, please, Ben too_ ) gets dragged out of Purgatory. Maybe they do have a role to play in this story. Everything they’re going through, maybe it has a reason, maybe it’ll all work out in the end, and they’ll go home. Both of them.

“Good.” Dean is staring intently at him, and Jeremy is suddenly sure that he knows what’s going through his mind. And then Dean confirms that suspicion by continuing, “You know something.”

Jeremy looks at him. “I don’t know if things are the same.”

“Tell me. It’s about Cas, isn’t it?”

All of them are staring at Jeremy now. Dean’s fists are clenched, not in anger but in effort of holding back some emotion—hope, perhaps. Or fear.

“Soon—I’m sorry, I don’t know exactly when—there’s going to be an angelic invasion into Purgatory. They’re going to drag Cas out. He won’t remember it happening.” He hesitates, not sure whether to continue, but then decides he’s in for it anyway, “The angel who ordered him pulled out, she’s going to…use him. Brainwash him. To keep an eye on what’s happening with the demon tablet and–with the demon tablet.”

“Why does she have to brainwash him? Seems like helping us take care of that crap is something Cas would be willing to do on his own.” He frowns. “Do they not want Hell closed? Is this about the Cage, or somethin’? They gonna try to spring Michael and Lucifer, have Apocalypse 3.0?”

He shakes his head miserably. “No…Because she wants him keeping an eye on you too.”

“Again. Spying. God damn it.”

“But now you’ll know about it. And, Dean, if this still happens—I don’t know if it will, so much has happened, maybe it’s different now—you have to know that Cas won’t remember what he’s doing. He’s not aware of Naomi—the angel’s—influence except when he’s with her. But if you know, you can tell him. Maybe that will make the difference. Maybe you can break her control before it can even get hold. If any of this happens.”

“If any of this happens.” Dean repeats. “So what hasn’t happened so far—other than you bein’ here?”

Jeremy looks up, recounting.

“Sam arriving with Kevin. Cas trying to go through the portal—“ Dean looks at him sharply “—and…well, that’s it, really.”

Dean nods, once, sharply. Then he turns back to the others, taking stock of their expressions. Kevin’s watching Jeremy, not quite meeting his eyes. Jeremy wonders if Kevin suspects that he knows things he’s not telling, if he suspects Jeremy could offer information about the demon tablet. He doesn’t ask though. Sam’s watching his brother, a mixed expression of relief, doubt, and guilt on his face.

“All right. We’re gonna go pick up the Hell rock where Kevin’s stashed it, lock up Hell, and then it’s blue skies and sunshine. Hopefully in the meantime, Jeremy’s right and Cas—and Ben—will get back and we can get both of ‘em back home. Cas bein’ here to help us, better odds of getting’ them home right.”

“Not yet.” Kevin speaks up, and they all turn to look at him. He’s slumped against the wall by the door, and for the first time Jeremy notices how tired he looks. “I’ve just spent the last month on the run from Crowley and his henchmen, trying to find Sam and hiding the tablet, hitchhiking halfway across the country. And when I found Sam, you called, and we just rushed up here. I need to eat. And shower. And sleep. It can wait a day. No one’s going to find where I hid it.”

Sam and Dean look over at Jeremy, as if for confirmation that they won’t be harmed by a delay. He looks back at them as blandly as possible. The oracle gig is getting old already. In truth, he doesn’t think it will matter if they wait a day, if they’d gone last week, if they go a month from now. If the tablet is still going to be there, it will be there. If they’re following along the same storyline that he knows, it will be gone no matter when they get there. He doesn’t tell them this, just nods. They can wait. Get rest. They’re all in for a lot more than they know. More than he knows, perhaps.

They decide—or Dean decides, it’s not quite clear, but they all agree—to head out in the morning. It’s a good day’s drive, but Jeremy thinks Dean is going to push Baby as hard as he can. He hasn’t been behind her wheel for a year, and hardly at all for some time before that. Even as the decision is made to stay, he sees that Dean is already itching to get on the road, surreptitiously glancing out the window at his car, then looking around at the rest of them as though they might decide to get on the road already.

The night before they leave is an uneventful one for most of them. Kevin eats, showers, eats again. He collapses into a hastily made-up cot, sleeping deeply and apparently dreamlessly. Jeremy is less lucky. He eats, both regretful and grateful for their lack of any fresh meat, considers and dismisses the idea of another shower. He tries to sleep, but is awoken regularly by nightmares he can’t quite recall, only that he was somewhere dark and cold and someone was screaming. Sometimes he thinks it’s Cas. Sometimes it’s Ben. Sometimes it’s his own voice, and it startles him awake to stare into the darkness, fearing he’d awoken the others. But they are either used to nightmares, or he isn’t yelling aloud.

The final dream he has before he is awakened by Sam at dawn is the most coherent, and the most terrifying for it. They’re back in Purgatory, just him and Ben—gone back to that short space of time before they’d met up with Dean, Cas, and Benny. He’s got Ben shoved up against a tree, hissing in his ear, _you are insane, crazy_ , and he feels the same furious hunger, the urge to bite and tear. _Give in,_ the hunger whispers to him. _This is a dream, it means nothing, so give in._ And so instead of releasing him, stepping back, he presses forward, bites down on his neck. It’s hard; his teeth are strangely dull and fangless and it’s hard to draw blood so he grabs skin between his teeth and pulls, gnashing. Ben is frozen, unresisting, for a moment, and he has a chance to believe this is because it’s a dream.

Then Ben starts struggling, fighting back with a wiry strength probably fed by equal parts fury and fear. But he has the advantage of leverage, and when his teeth have finally pierced the skin he tastes blood. He whines, sucking it into his mouth, teeth grinding to make the blood flow faster, oblivious to all else. He drinks his fill, and only then does he release Ben, who at some point has stopped fighting. As he steps back he sees why; the man leaning against the tree is bled white, corpselike in his paleness. He grins up at Jeremy, and there is no blood on his neck, no bite there. But his eyes are crimson, and blood runs from his nose, the corners of his mouth. He raises his hands, and Jeremy sees where his side has been ripped open, sees a white gleam of ribs. His right hand is missing. _You should have been the one to stay_ , the gory creature tells him through a mouthful of blood that drips off his chin, onto his already blood soaked chest.

He snaps awake, gasping, to see Sam bending over him.

“Nightmare?” Sam asks, then continues without waiting for an answer, “We’re ready to get on the road.”

They leave quickly, Kevin still seemingly only half awake. Jeremy feels nearly as tired as Kevin looks, but he’s afraid to let himself sleep, afraid of the nightmare returning. You should have stayed. He shivers. He’s not a monster. He refuses. One bad dream and some weird craving for rare meat won’t make him a monster. The dream-apparition is wrong.

Dean drives fast and reckless, as Jeremy had known he would. They stop only once, and Dean grumbles and growls at the enforced break. He hasn’t driven in a year, Jeremy realizes. For someone who spends as much time as the brothers do on the road, that must’ve been hard. Dean grins back at all of them when they get on the road again, turns up the radio. The road flies under them, and time slips past in their wake.

It’s late evening, nearly eight o’clock, when they arrive at the bus station. Jeremy finds he’s tense, worried that their delay had had an effect after all, that the tablet which would have been there had they rushed has been snatched out from under their hands. He hangs back as they approach the blue lockers, Kevin with a confident grin, Dean and Sam in hunter mode, confident yet careful. He has to close his eyes as Kevin turns the key in the locker, expecting the tablet to be gone, to send them on a dangerous chase. But when he hears nothing but breathing, some soft rustling, the sound of a zipper, he opens his eyes to see Sam slipping something in a paper bag into his bag, zipping it back up and nodding to all of them. Kevin’s grin has taken on an air of I told you, and he looks directly at Jeremy as if understanding his fear.

“Got it. Let’s find a place to crash for tonight, then head on back to the cabin in the morning, let Kevin get started on it.”

Dean finds a motel in town, and while he books their rooms—Jeremy wonders again how he pays for it, how he could possibly have a credit card that works—the rest of them wait in the car, listening to the soft tick of Baby cooling down. Jeremy still feels vaguely stunned at how easy it was; the tablet had been there and they’d simply picked it up. It’s real, too; as they wait for Dean to return Kevin pulls it out of Sam’s bag to look over and Jeremy sees it for the first time, strange symbols carved into its smooth surface. He’s examining it, wondering at how there could be so much information contained in so few symbols, wondering if the writing is more a code to unlock a message in the prophet’s mind than a language. Kevin gasps suddenly, ripping him away from his thoughts. He looks over at the young man, alarmed.

Kevin’s hands tighten convulsively around the tablet, then fly up to press against his ears. There’s a high keening sound that for a moment Jeremy can’t place. He sees Sam lunging into the backseat with them, grabbing at Kevin, and he realizes Kevin is screaming, his body gone tense and rigid.

 “Get it away from him!” Sam shouts.

Jeremy rushes to pick up the tablet. He holds it gingerly, moving to put it back in the bag, back in Sam’s bag. He zips it up and tosses it to the front, on Sam’s seat. Sam is leaning awkwardly halfway into the back, still partly in the front of the car, and seeming to fill most of the car’s space. Kevin is still keen, body shuddering spasmodically, hands now not just pressed against his ears but tearing at them. Sam grabs his hands, pulls them away from his ears. At that moment Kevin collapses forward, boneless and silent. Sam and Jeremy stare at one another.

They shake Kevin gently, but he doesn’t respond. Neither of them hear Dean’s approach, or his cheerful,

“Rooms sixteen and seventeen, street level too, not that it matters but—“ He pulls the door open and breaks off, taking in the scene, the way Sam is sprawled half into the back seat, the way Kevin lies motionless between the two of them. Jeremy thinks he sees a look of resignation flash across his face— _of course something had to go wrong,_ it says—before his mouth tightens and his eyes turn stony and grim.

“Dean, I think we have a problem.”

Sam looks up at his brother, and Jeremy sees the same look on his face. _We’re the Winchesters. How can we think something will turn out right for us?_ He twists himself back into the front seat, motions for Dean. Jeremy takes advantage of the recovered space to lay Kevin out on the backseat, Kevin’s head on his lap. He’s breathing, shallow and deep, but unresponsive. _Wake up_ , Jeremy pleads silently, running his hand through Kevin’s hair, feeling the feverish heat of his forehead. Wake up. _This isn’t what’s supposed to happen. This isn’t the story I wanted._


End file.
